Part 23 (1/2)

I was very carefully and for those tiht in music

Schell, his name was, and they called hianized a little group of Prussian refugees into a Gerularly, and then in a desultory way as I caton City from my school in Philadelphia, he ha sonor unreceptiveto compose dra my child companions Once in the national capital, when I was 12 years old and Adelina 9, we played together at a charity concert She had sung ”The Last Rose of Summer,” and I had played her brother-in-law's variation upon ”Home, Sweet Hoain and again Then we ca I sat down at the keyboard and played an accompaniment with my own interpolations upon ”Old Folks At Ho the words

Then they fairly took the roof off

Once during a sojourn in Paris I was throith Christine Nilsson

She was in the heyday of her success at the Theater Lyrique under the patronage of Madame Miolan-Carvalho One day I said to her: ”The tinant

”Nevertheless,” I continued, ”let me teach you a sure encore” I played her Stephen Foster's ihted The sequel was that it served her even a better turn than it had served Adelina Patti

I played and transposed for the piano most of thefirst produced in public by Christy's Minstrels

IV

Stephen Foster was the ne'er-do-well of a good Pennsylvania family A sister of his had hters of thisthe White House we had--shall I dare write it?--high jinks with our nigger-minstrel concerts on the sly

Will S Hays, the rival of Foster as a song writer and one of my reporters on the Courier-Journal, told ood deal of what you ht call a barroom loafer He possessed a sweet tenor voice before it was spoiled by drink, and was fond ofabout it He had a German friend hen he died left him a inal text There is where Foster got his ave out”

I took it as merely the spleen of a rival coiven over exclusively to the perfor the rest were selections from an unfinished opera--”Rosemonde,” I think it was called--in which the whole rhythm and movements and parts of the score of Old Folks at Horown up contes Many of them ritten in the old Rowan homestead, just outside of Bardstown, Ky, where Louis Philippe lived and taught, and for a season Talleyrand made his abode The Roere notable people

John Rowan, the elder, head of the house, was a famous lawyer, who divided oratorical honors with Henry Clay, and like Clay, was a Senator in Congress; his son, ”young John,” as he was called, Stephen Foster's pal, went as ht duels, and was as Bob Acres wanted to be, ”a devil of a fellow” He once told me he had been inti men in Paris, and that they had both of theinal of Becky Sharp

The Foster songs quite captivateda little, as well as play, and learned each of them--especially Old Folks at Home and My Old Kentucky Houe was tre has since rivalled the popular impression theyreat historian, drareat reat pianist The bone-felon did the business for this later But all my life I have been able to thumb the keyboard at least for the children to dance, and it has been a recourse and solace so intervals of embittered journalism and unprosperous statesmanshi+p

V

Theodore Thoether He was a master of the violin before he took to orchestration We remained the best of friends to the end of his days

On the slightest provocation, or none, we passed entire nights together

Once after a concert he suddenly exclainer was a ---- fraud?”

A little surprised even by one of his outbreaks, I said: ”Wagner may have written some trick music but I hardly think that he was a fraud”

He reflected a moment ”Well,” he continued, ”it ht not to say it--I know I aner craze--but I consider hi ”classic entertain of the sort

After a very tireso at the hard lines of a peripateticquail and as dry a glass of chane as you ever had in your life”

The as poured out and he took a sip