It is a mistake to suppose that, even as an accomplishment, piano
playing is so very highly prized.
I dropped in to spend an hour with an intelligent friend. I was
particularly interested in the Franco-Prussian war, and, as he had
lived much, both in Paris and Berlin, I hoped to learn about some
things not discussed in the newspapers. His youngest daughter, a
beautiful girl, had just arrived, fresh from the glories of the
closing exercises of a seminary.
We were in the midst of our discussions, and he was repeating some
conversations with Bismark, in which I was intensely interested,
when the fond, proud mother said:--
"Now, if you will listen, Gertie will play the piece which she
played last Thursday evening at Madame--'s." Gertie began, alas,
and she kept on, and on, and on.
There were four of us gentlemen, three were callers, one the editor
of a city paper. We were all eager to listen to our host, of Bismark
and Napoleon.
That unhappy child kept at it. We sat there with a hypocritical
smile on our faces but, internally, as mad as we could be. When at
length, the sixteen pages had been finished, and the girl turned
around for the prescribed adulation, all but one of us exclaimed,
"wonderful, exquisite, delightful!" and the editor, (who, when
coming down in the car an hour later, emphasized his disgust with an
awful big word,) declared he had never heard anything so wonderful,
and added, that she really ought to go abroad to study with the
great masters. The lying executed by some of us was perfect. I have
forgotten whether this kind of falsehood is mentioned in the works
upon white lying, but if I ever write upon "white lies," I shall
give this kind a prominent place.
Girls, if you ever obtrude an average piano performance upon a
company of intelligent people, engaged in conversation, nine in ten
of them will secretly regard you as a nuisance, no matter how much
they exclaim "exquisite, delicious, wonderful!" Of course your
parents will be gratified with your performance; mamma will be
pleased and proud with the show-off, and papa will smile. How else
could he do, after paying $2,000 piano bills? It is a pretty picture
to their eyes--the loved one seated at a splendid, great
instrument, executing one of the grandest compositions of one of the
immortal masters. And, although you are not inspired with the
passion of the heaven-born composer, and your performance is a
mechanical, soulless hum-drum, that matters not to your father and
mother, their loving imaginations will supply all that is needed to
make the picture complete. But the rest of us will heartily wish
that you had not interrupted our conversation.
It is an amazing blindness on the part of parents. It always
astonishes me that they don't see the impertinence of the thing.
They certainly wouldn't think of asking the company to cease their
conversation to hear you speak your piece, or perform a dance. The
piano alone is licensed to say to everybody, "cease your
conversation, and listen to me; I am about to make a big noise!"
But the fashion has never imposed upon people of sense and real
politeness. When the piano has started up without even a notice, I
have seen such people flush with indignation.