"And I," said I,--"do you think I am never coming here again?"

"You found it a hard harbor to make," said the Proxenus. "We have

published no sailing directions since St. Paul touched here, and those

which he wrote--he sent them to the Corinthians yonder--neither they nor

any one else have seemed to understand."

"Good by."

"God bless you! Good by." And I sailed for Gallipoli.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote B: I am writing in Westerly's snuggery, and in Providence they

believe in Webster. I dare say it is worse in Worcester. A good many

things are.]

[Footnote C: The reader who cares to follow the detail is referred to

Diodorus Siculus, XII.; Strabo, VI.; Ælian, V. H. 9, c. 24; Athenæus,

XII. 518; Plutarch in Pelopidas; Herodotus, V. and VI. Compare Laurent's

Geographical Notes, and Wheeler and Gaisford; Pliny, III. 15, VII. 22,

XVI. 33, VIII. 64, XXXI. 9; Aristotle, Polit. IV. 12, V. 3; Heyne's

Opuscula, II. 74; Bentley's Phalaris, 367; Solinus, 2, § 10, "luxuries

grossly exaggerated"; Scymnus, 337-360; Aristophanes, Vesp. 1427, 1436;

Lycophron, Alex. 1079; Polybius, Gen. Hist. II. 3, on the confederation

of Sybaris, Krotan, and Kaulonia,--"a perplexing statement," says Grote,

"showing that he must have conceived the history of Sybaris in a very

different form from that in which it is commonly represented"; third

volume of De Non, who disagrees with Magnan as to the site of Sybaris,

and says the sea-shore is uninhabitable! Tuccagni Orlandini, Vol. XI.,

Supplement, p. 294; besides the dictionaries and books of travels,

including Murray. I have availed myself, without other reference, of

most of these authorities.]

THE PIANO IN THE UNITED STATES.

Twenty-five thousand pianos were made in the United States last year!

This is the estimate of the persons who know most of this branch of

manufacture, but it is only an approximation to the truth; for, besides

the sixty makers in New York, the thirty in Boston, the twenty in

Philadelphia, the fifteen in Baltimore, the ten in Albany, and the less

number in Cincinnati, Buffalo, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco,

there are small makers in many country towns, and even in villages, who

buy the parts of a piano in the nearest city, put them together, and

sell the instrument in the neighborhood. The returns of the houses which

supply the ivory keys of the piano to all the makers in the country are

confirmatory of this estimate; which, we may add, is that of Messrs.

Steinway of New York, who have made it a point to collect both the

literature and the statistics of the instrument, of which they are among

the largest manufacturers in the world.

The makers' prices of pianos now range from two hundred and ninety

dollars to one thousand; and the prices to the public, from four hundred

and fifty dollars to fifteen hundred. We may conclude, therefore, that

the people of the United States during the year 1866 expended fifteen

millions of dollars in the purchase of new pianos. It is not true that

we export many pianos to foreign countries, as the public are led to

suppose from the advertisements of imaginative manufacturers. American

citizens--all but the few consummately able kings of business--allow a

free play to their imagination in advertising the products of their

skill. Canada buys a small number of our pianos; Cuba, a few; Mexico, a

few; South America, a few; and now and then one is sent to Europe, or

taken thither by a Thalberg or a Gottschalk; but an inflated currency

and a war tariff make it impossible for Americans to compete with

European makers in anything but excellence. In price, they cannot

compete. Every disinterested and competent judge with whom we have

conversed on this subject gives it as his deliberate opinion that the

best American piano is the best of all pianos, and the one longest

capable of resisting the effects of a trying climate; yet we cannot sell

them, at present, in any considerable numbers, in any market but our

own. Protectionists are requested to note this fact, which is not an

isolated fact. America possesses such an astonishing genius for

inventing and combining labor-saving machinery, that we could now supply

the world with many of its choicest products, in the teeth of native

competition, but for the tariff, the taxes, and the inflation, which

double the cost of producing. The time may come, however, when we shall

sell pianos at Paris, and watches in London, as we already do

sewing-machines everywhere.

Twenty-five thousand pianos a year, at a cost of fifteen millions of

dollars! Presented in this manner, the figures produce an effect upon

the mind, and we wonder that an imperfectly reconstructed country could

absorb in a single year, and that year an unprosperous one, so large a

number of costly musical instruments. But, upon performing a sum in long

division, we discover that these startling figures merely mean, that

every working-day in this country one hundred and twelve persons buy a

new piano. When we consider, that every hotel, steamboat, and public

school above a certain very moderate grade, must have from one to four

pianos, and that young ladies' seminaries jingle with them from basement

to garret, (one school in New York has thirty Chickerings,) and that

almost every couple that sets up housekeeping on a respectable scale

considers a piano only less indispensable than a kitchen range, we are

rather inclined to wonder at the smallness than at the largeness of the

number.

The trade in new pianos, however, is nothing to the countless

transactions in old. Here figures are impossible; but probably ten

second-hand pianos are sold to one new one. The business of letting

pianos is also one of great extent. It is computed by the well-informed,

that the number of these instruments now "out," in the city of New York,

is three thousand. There is one firm in Boston that usually has a

thousand let. As the rent of a piano ranges from six dollars to twelve

dollars a month,--cartage both ways paid by the hirer,--it may be

inferred that this business, when conducted on a large scale, and with

the requisite vigilance, is not unprofitable. In fact, the income of a

piano-letting business has approached eighty thousand dollars per annum,

of which one third was profit. It has, however, its risks and drawbacks.

From June to September, the owner of the instruments must find storage

for the greater part of his stock, and must do without most of his

monthly returns. Many of those who hire pianos, too, are persons

"hanging on the verge" of society, who have little respect for the

property of others, and vanish to parts unknown, leaving a damaged piano

behind them.

England alone surpasses the United States in the number of pianos

annually manufactured. In 1852, the one hundred and eighty English

makers produced twenty-three thousand pianos,--fifteen hundred grands,

fifteen hundred squares, and twenty thousand uprights. As England has

enjoyed fifteen years of prosperity since, it is probable that the

annual number now exceeds that of the United States. The English people,

however, pay much less money for the thirty thousand pianos which they

probably buy every year, than we do for our twenty-five thousand. In

London, the retail price of the best Broadwood grand, in plain mahogany

case, is one hundred and thirty-five guineas; which is a little more

than half the price of the corresponding American instrument. The best

London square piano, in plain case, is sixty guineas,--almost exactly

half the American price. Two thirds of all the pianos made in England

are low-priced uprights,--averaging thirty-five guineas,--which would

not stand in our climate for a year. England, therefore, supplies

herself and the British empire with pianos at an annual expenditure of

about eight millions of our present dollars. American makers, we may

add, have recently taken a hint from their English brethren with regard

to the upright instrument. Space is getting to be the dearest of all

luxuries in our cities, and it has become highly desirable to have

pianos that occupy less of it than the square instrument which we

usually see. Successful attempts have been recently made to apply the

new methods of construction to the upright piano, with a view to make it

as durable as those of the usual forms. Such a brisk demand has sprung

up for the improved uprights, that the leading makers are producing them

in considerable numbers, and the Messrs. Steinway are erecting a new

building for the sole purpose of manufacturing them. The American

uprights, however, cannot be cheap. Such is the nature of the American

climate, that a piano, to be tolerable, must be excellent; and while

parts of the upright cost more than the corresponding parts of the

square, no part of it costs less. Six hundred dollars is the price of

the upright in plain rosewood case,--fifty dollars more than a plain

rosewood square.

Paris pianos are renowned, the world over, and consequently three tenths

of all the pianos made in Paris are exported to foreign countries.

France, too, owing to the cheapness of labor, can make a better cheap

piano than any other country. In 1852, there were ten thousand pianos

made in Paris, at an average cost of one thousand francs each; and, we

are informed, a very good new upright piano can now be bought in France

for one hundred dollars. But in France the average wages of

piano-makers are five francs per day; in London, ten shillings; in New

York, four dollars and thirty-three cents. The cream of the business, in

Paris, is divided among three makers,--Erard, Hertz, and Pleyel,--each

of whom has a concert-hall of his own, to give _éclat_ to his

establishment. We presume Messrs. Steinway added "Steinway Hall" to the

attractions of New York from the example of their Paris friends, and

soon the metropolis will boast a "Chickering Hall" as well. This is an

exceedingly expensive form of advertisement. Steinway Hall cost two

hundred thousand dollars, and has not yet paid the cost of warming,

cleaning, and lighting it. This, however, is partly owing to the

good-nature of the proprietors, who find it hard to exact the rent from

a poor artist after a losing concert, and who have a constitutional

difficulty about saying _No_, when the use of the hall is asked for a

charitable object.

In Germany there are no manufactories of pianos on the scale of England,

France, and the United States. A business of five pianos a week excites

astonishment in a German state, and it is not uncommon there for one man

to construct every part of a piano,--a work of three or four months. Mr.

Steinway the elder has frequently done this in his native place, and

could now do it. A great number of excellent instruments are made in

Germany in the slow, patient, thorough manner of the Germans; but in the

fashionable houses of Berlin and Vienna no German name is so much valued

as those of the celebrated makers of Paris. In the London exhibition of

1851, Russian pianos competed for the medals, some of which attracted

much attention from the excellence of their construction. Messrs.

Chickering assert, that the Russians were the first to employ

successfully the device of "overstringing," as it is called, by which

the bass strings are stretched over the others.

The piano, then, one hundred and fifty-seven years after its invention,

in spite of its great cost, has become the leading musical instrument

of Christendom. England produces thirty thousand every year; the United

States, twenty-five thousand; France, fifteen thousand; Germany, perhaps

ten thousand; and all other countries, ten thousand; making a total of

ninety thousand, or four hundred and twenty-two for every working-day.

It is computed, that an average piano is the result of one hundred and

twenty days' work; and, consequently, there must be at least fifty

thousand men employed in the business. And it is only within a few years

that the making of these noble instruments has been done on anything

like the present scale. Messrs. Broadwood, of London, who have made in

all one hundred and twenty-nine thousand pianos, only begin to count at

the year 1780; and in the United States there were scarcely fifty pianos

a year made fifty years ago.

We need scarcely say that the production of music for the piano has kept

pace with the advance of the instrument. Dr. Burney mentions, in his

History of Music (Vol. IV. p. 664), that when he came to London in 1744,

"Handel's Harpsichord Lessons and Organ Concertos, and the two First

Books of Scarletti's Lessons, were all the good music for keyed

instruments at that time in the nation." We have at this moment before

us the catalogue of music sold by one house in Boston, Oliver Ditson &

Co. It is a closely printed volume of three hundred and sixty pages, and

contains the titles of about thirty-three thousand pieces of music,

designed to be performed, wholly or partly, on the piano. By far the

greater number are piano music pure and simple. It is not a very rare

occurrence for a new piece to have a sale of one hundred thousand copies

in the United States. A composer who can produce the kind of music that

pleases the greatest number, may derive a revenue from his art ten times

greater than Mozart or Beethoven enjoyed in their most prosperous time.

There are trifling waltzes and songs upon the list of Messrs. Ditson,

which have yielded more profit than Mozart received for "Don Giovanni"

and "The Magic Flute" together. We learn from the catalogue just

mentioned, that the composers of music have an advantage over the

authors of books, in being always able to secure a publisher for their

productions. Messrs. Ditson announce that they are ready and willing to

publish any piece of music by any composer on the following easy

conditions: "Three dollars per page for engraving; two dollars and a

half per hundred sheets of paper; and one dollar and a quarter per

hundred pages for printing." At the same time they frankly notify

ambitious teachers, that "not one piece in ten pays the cost of getting

up, and not one in fifty proves a success."

The piano, though its recent development has been so rapid, is the

growth of ages, and we can, for three thousand years or more, dimly and

imperfectly trace its growth. The instrument, indeed, has found an

historian,--Dr. Rimbault of London,--who has gathered the scattered

notices of its progress into a handsome quarto, now accessible in some

of our public libraries. It is far from our desire to make a display of

cheap erudition; yet perhaps ladies who love their piano may care to

spend a minute or two in learning how it came to be the splendid triumph

of human ingenuity, the precious addition to the happiness of existence,

which they now find it to be. "I have had my share of trouble," we heard

a lady say the other day, "but my piano has kept me happy." All ladies

who have had the virtue to subdue this noble instrument to their will,

can say something similar of the solace and joy they daily derive from

it. The Greek legend that the twang of Diana's bow suggested to Apollo

the invention of the lyre, was not a mere fancy; for the first stringed

instrument of which we have any trace in ancient sculpture differed from

an ordinary bow only in having more than one string. A two-stringed bow

was, perhaps, the first step towards the grand piano of to-day.

Additional strings involved the strengthening of the bow that held them;

and, accordingly, we find the Egyptian harps, discovered in the

catacombs by Wilkinson, very thick and massive in the lower part of the

frame, which terminated sometimes in a large and solid female head. From

the two-stringed bow to these huge twelve-stringed Egyptian harps, six

feet high and beautifully finished with veneer, inlaid with ivory and

mother-of-pearl, no one can say how many centuries elapsed. The catgut

strings of the harps of three thousand years ago are still capable of

giving a musical sound. The best workmen of the present time, we are

assured, could not finish a harp more exquisitely than these are

finished; yet they have no mechanism for tightening or loosening the

strings, and no strings except such as were furnished by the harmless,

necessary cat. The Egyptian harp, with all its splendor of decoration,

was a rude and barbaric instrument.

It has not been shown that Greece or Rome added one essential

improvement to the stringed instruments which they derived from older

nations. The Chickerings, Steinways, Erards, and Broadwoods of our day

cannot lay a finger upon any part of a piano, and say that they owe it

to the Greeks or to the Romans.

The Cithara of the Middle Ages was a poor thing enough, in the form of a

large P, with ten strings in the oval part; but it had _movable pegs_,

and could be easily tuned. It was, therefore, a step toward the piano of

the French Exposition of 1867.

But the Psaltery was a great stride forward. This instrument was an

arrangement of _strings on a box_. Here we have the principle of the

sounding-board,--a thing of vital moment to the piano, and one upon

which the utmost care is bestowed by all the great makers. Whoever first

thought of stretching strings on a box may also be said to have half

invented the guitar and the violin. No single subsequent thought has

been so fruitful of consequences as this in the improvement of stringed

instruments. The reader, of course, will not confound the psaltery of

the Middle Ages with the psaltery of the Hebrews, respecting which

nothing is known. The translators of the Old Testament assigned the

names with which they were familiar to the musical instruments of the

Jews.

About the year 1200 we arrive at the Dulcimer, which was an immense

psaltery, with improvements. Upon a harp-shaped box, eighteen to

thirty-six feet long, fifty strings were stretched, which the player

struck with a stick or a long-handled hammer. This instrument was a

signal advance toward the grand piano. It _was_ a piano, without its

machinery.

The next thing, obviously, must have been to contrive a method of

striking the strings with certainty and evenness; and, accordingly, we

find indications of a keyed instrument after the year 1300, called the

Clavicytherium, or keyed cithara. The invention of keys permitted the

strings to be covered over, and therefore the strings of the

clavicytherium were enclosed _in_ a box, instead of being stretched _on_

a box. The first keys were merely long levers with a nub at the end of

them, mounted on a pivot, which the player canted up at the strings on

the see-saw principle. It has required four hundred years to bring the

mechanism of the piano key to its present admirable perfection. The

clavicytherium was usually a very small instrument,--an oblong box,

three or four feet in length, that could be lifted by a girl of

fourteen. The clavichord and manichord, which we read of in Mozart's

letters, were only improved and better-made clavicytheria. How affecting

the thought, that the divine Mozart had nothing better on which to try

the ravishing airs of "The Magic Flute" than a wretched box of brass

wires, twanged with pieces of quill! So it is always, and in all

branches of art. Shakespeare's plays, Titian's pictures, the great

cathedrals, Newton's discoveries, Mozart's and Handel's music, were

executed while the implements of art and science were still very rude.

Queen Elizabeth's instrument, the Virginals, was a box of strings, with

improved keys, and mounted on four legs. In other words, it was a small

and very bad piano. The excellent Pepys, in his account of the great

fire of London of 1666, says: "River full of lighters and boats taking

in goods, and good goods swimming in the water; and only I observed that

hardly one lighter or boat in three that had the goods of a house in it,

but there were a pair of virginalls in it." Why "a pair"? For the same

reason that induces many persons to say "a pair of stairs," and "a pair

of compasses," that is, no reason at all.

It is plain that the virginals, or virgin's clavichord, was very far

from holding the rank among musical instruments which the piano now

possesses. If any of our readers should ever come upon a thin folio

entitled "Musick's Monument," (London, 1676,) we advise him to clutch

it, retire from the haunts of men, and abandon himself to the delight of

reading the Izaak Walton of music. It is a most quaint and curious

treatise upon "the Noble Lute, the best of instruments," with a chapter

upon "the generous Viol," by Thomas Mace, "one of the clerks of Trinity

College in the University of Cambridge." Master Mace deigns not to

mention keyed instruments, probably regarding keys as old sailors regard

the lubber's hole,--fit only for greenhorns. The "Noble Lute," of which

Thomas Mace discourses, was a large, heavy, pot-bellied guitar with many

strings. We learn from this enthusiastic author, that the noble lute had

been calumniated by some ignorant persons; and it is in refuting their

calumnious imputations that he pours out a torrent of knowledge upon his

beloved instrument, and upon the state of music in England in 1675. In

reply to the charge, that the noble lute was a very hard instrument to

play upon, he gives posterity a piece of history. That the lute _was_

hard once, he confesses, but asserts that "it is now easie, and very

familiar."

"The First and Chief Reason that it was Hard in former Times, was,

Because they had to their Lutes but Few Strings; viz. to some 10, some

12, and some 14 Strings, which in the beginning of my Time were almost

altogether in use; (and is this present Year 1675. Fifty four years

since I first began to undertake That Instrument). But soon after, they

began to adde more Strings unto Their Lutes, so that we had Lutes of 16,

18, and 20 Strings; which they finding to be so Great a Convenience,

stayed not long till they added more, to the Number of 24, where we now

rest satisfied; only upon my Theorboes I put 26 Strings, for some Good

Reasons I shall be able to give in due Time and Place."

Another aspersion upon the noble lute was, that it was "a Woman's

Instrument." Master Mace gallantly observes, that if this were true, he

cannot understand why it should suffer any disparagement on that

account, "but rather that it should have the more Reputation and

Honour."

There are passages in this ancient book which take us back so agreeably

to the concert-rooms and parlors of two hundred years ago, and give us

such an insight into the musical resources of our forefathers, that we

shall venture to copy two or three of them. The following brief

discourse upon Pegs is very amusing:--

"And you must know, that from the Badness of the Pegs, arise several

Inconveniences; The first I have named, viz. the Loss of Labour. The 2d.

is, the Loss of Time; for I have known some so extreme long in Tuning

their Lutes and Viols, by reason only of Bad Pegs, that They have

wearied out their Auditors before they began to Play. A 3d.

Inconvenience is, that oftentimes, if a High-stretch'd small String

happen to slip down, 'tis in great danger to break at the next winding

up, especially in wet moist weather, and that It have been long slack.

The 4th. is, that when a String hath been slipt back, it will not stand

in Tune, under many Amendments; for it is continually in stretching

itself, till it come to Its highest stretch. A 5th. is, that in the

midst of a Consort, All the Company must leave off, because of some

Eminent String slipping. A 6th. is, that sometimes ye shall have such a

Rap upon the Knuckles, by a sharp-edg'd Peg, and a stiff strong String,

that the very Skin will be taken off. And 7thly. It is oftentimes an

occasion of the Thrusting off the Treble-Peg-Nut, and sometime of the

Upper Long Head; And I have seen the Neck of an Old Viol, thrust off

into two pieces, by reason of the Badness of the Pegs, meerly with the

Anger and hasty Choller of Him that has been Tuning. Now I say that

These are very Great Inconveniences, and do adde much to the Trouble and

Hardness of the Instrument. I shall therefore inform you how ye may Help

All These with Ease; viz. Thus. When you perceive any Peg to be troubled

with the slippery Disease, assure your self he will never grow better of

Himself, without some of Your Care; Therefore take Him out, and examine

the Cause."

He gives advice with regard to the preservation of the Lute in the moist

English climate:--

"And that you may know how to shelter your Lute, in the worst of Ill

weathers (which is moist) you shall do well, ever when you Lay it by in

the day-time, to put It into a Bed, that is constantly used, between the

Rug and Blanket; but never between the Sheets, because they may be moist

with Sweat, &c.

"This is the most absolute and best place to keep It in always, by which

doing, you will find many Great Conveniencies, which I shall here set

down....

"Therefore, a Bed will secure from all These Inconveniences, and keep

your Glew so Hard as Glass, and All safe and sure; only to be excepted,

That no Person be so inconsiderate, as to Tumble down upon the Bed,

whilst the Lute is There; For I have known several Good Lutes spoil'd

with such a Trick."

We may infer from Master Mace his work, that the trivial virginals were

gaining in popular estimation upon the nobler instrument which is the

theme of his eulogy. He has no patience with those who object to his

beloved lute that it is out of fashion. He remarks upon this subject in

a truly delicious strain:--

"I cannot understand, how Arts and Sciences should be subject unto any

such Phantastical, Giddy, or Inconsiderate Toyish Conceits, as ever to

be said to be in Fashion, or out of Fashion. I remember there was a

Fashion, not many years since, for Women in their Apparel to be so Pent

up by the Straitness, and Stiffness of their Gown-Shoulder-Sleeves, that

They could not so much as Scratch Their Heads, for the Necessary Remove

of a Biting Louse; nor Elevate their Arms scarcely to feed themselves

Handsomly; nor Carve a Dish of Meat at a Table, but their whole Body

must needs Bend towards the Dish. This must needs be concluded by

Reason, a most Vnreasonable, and Inconvenient Fashion; and They as

Vnreasonably Inconsiderate, who would be so Abus'd, and Bound up. I

Confess It was a very Good Fashion, for some such Viragoes, who were

us'd to Scratch their Husbands Faces or Eyes, and to pull them down by

the Coxcombes. And I am subject to think, It was a meer Rogery in the

Combination, or Club-council of the Taylors, to Abuse the Women in That

Fashion, in Revenge of some of the Curst Dames their Wives."

Some lute-makers, this author informs us, were so famous in Europe, that

he had seen lutes of their making, "pittifull, old, batter'd, crack'd

things," that were valued at a hundred pounds sterling each; and he had

often seen lutes of three or four pounds' value "far more illustrious

and taking to a Common eye." In refuting the "aspersion that one had as

good keep a horse (for cost) as a Lute," he declares, that he never in

his life "took more than five shillings the quarter to maintain a Lute

with strings, only for the first stringing I ever took ten shillings."

He says, however: "I do confess Those who will be Prodigal and

Extraordinary Curious, may spend as much as may maintain two or three

Horses, and Men to ride upon them too, if they please. But 20_s._ per

ann. is an Ordinary Charge; and much more they need not spend, to

practise very hard."

Keyed instruments, despite the remonstrances of the lutists, continued

to advance toward their present supremacy. As often as an important

improvement was introduced, the instrument changed its name, just as in

our day the melodeon was improved into the harmonium, then into the

organ-harmonium, and finally into the cabinet organ. The virginals of

1600 became the spinet of 1700,--so called because the pieces of quill

employed in twanging the strings resembled thorns, and _spina_, in

Latin, means thorn. Any lady who will take the trouble to mount to the

fourth story of the Messrs. Chickering's piano store in the city of New

York, may see such a spinet as Mrs. Washington, Mrs. Adams, and Mrs.

Hamilton played upon when they were little girls. It is a small,

harp-shaped instrument on legs, exceedingly coarse and clumsy in its

construction,--the case rough and unpolished, the legs like those of a

kitchen table, with wooden castors such as were formerly used in the

construction of cheap bedsteads of the "trundle" variety. The keys,

however, are much like those now in use, though they are fewer in

number, and the ivory is yellow with age. If the reader would know the

tone of this ancient instrument, he has but to stretch a brass wire

across a box between two nails, and twang them with a short pointed

piece of quill. And if the reader would know how much better the year

1867 is than the year 1700, he may first hear this spinet played upon in

Messrs. Chickering's dusty garret, and then descend to one of the floors

below, and listen to the round, full, brilliant singing of a Chickering

grand, of the present illustrious year. By as much as that grand piano

is better than that poor little spinet, by so much is the present time

better than the days when Louis XIV. was king. If any intelligent

person doubts it, it is either because he does not know that age, or

because he does not know this age.

The spinet expanded into the harpsichord, the leading instrument from

1700 to 1800. A harpsichord was nothing but a very large and powerful

spinet. Some of them had two strings for each note; some had three; some

had three kinds of strings,--catgut, brass, and steel; and some were

painted and decorated in the most gorgeous style. Frederick the Great

had one made for him in London, with silver hinges, silver pedals,

inlaid case, and tortoise-shell front, at a cost of two hundred guineas.

Every part of the construction of the spinet was improved, and many new

minor devices were added; but the harpsichord, in its best estate, was

nothing but a spinet, because its strings were always twanged by a piece

of quill. How astonished would an audience be to hear a harpsichord of

1750, and to be informed that such an instrument Handel felt himself

fortunate to possess!

Next, the piano,--invented at Florence in 1710, by Bartolommeo

Cristofali.

The essential difference between a harpsichord and a piano is described

by the first name given to the piano, which was _hammer-harpsichord_, i.

e. a harpsichord the strings of which were struck by hammers, not

twanged by quills. The next name given to it was _forte-piano_, which

signified soft, with power; and this name became _piano-forte_, which it

still retains. One hundred years were required to prove to the musical

public the value of an invention without which no further development of

stringed instruments had been possible. No improvement in the mere

mechanism of the harpsichord could ever have overcome the trivial effect

of the twanging of the strings by pieces of quill; but the moment the

hammer principle was introduced, nothing was wanting but improved

mechanism to make it universal. It required, however, a century to

produce the improvements sufficient to give the piano equal standing

with the harpsichord. The first pianos gave forth a dull and feeble

sound to ears accustomed to the clear and harp-like notes of the

fashionable instrument.

In that same upper room of the Messrs. Chickering, near the spinet just

mentioned, there is an instrument, made perhaps about the year 1800,

which explains why the piano was so slow in making its way. It resembles

in form and size a grand piano of the present time, though of coarsest

finish and most primitive construction, with thin, square, kitchen-table

legs, and wooden knobs for castors. This interesting instrument has two

rows of keys, and is _both_ a harpsichord and a piano,--one set of keys

twanging the wires, and the other set striking them. The effect of the

piano notes is so faint and dull, that we cannot wonder at the general

preference for the harpsichord for so many years. It appears to have

been a common thing in the last century to combine two or more

instruments in one. Dr. Charles Burney, writing in 1770, mentions "a

very curious keyed instrument" made under the direction of Frederick II.

of Prussia. "It is in shape like a large clavichord, has several changes

of stops, and is occasionally a harp, a harpsichord, a lute, or

piano-forte; but the most curious property of this instrument is, that,

by drawing out the keys, the hammers are transferred to different

strings. By which means a composition may be transposed half a note, a

whole note, or a flat third lower at pleasure, without the embarrassment

of different notes or clefs, real or imaginary."

The same sprightly author tells us of "a fine Rucker harpsichord, which

he has had painted inside and out with as much delicacy as the finest

coach, or even snuff-box, I ever saw at Paris. On the outside is the

birth of Venus; and on the inside of the cover, the story of Rameau's

most famous opera, Castor and Pollux. Earth, Hell, and Elysium are there

represented; in Elysium, sitting on a bank, with a lyre in his hand, is

that celebrated composer himself."

This gay instrument was at Paris. In Italy, the native home of music,

the keyed instruments, in 1770, Dr. Burney says, were exceedingly

inferior to those of the North of Europe. "Throughout Italy, they have

generally little octave spinets to accompany singing in private houses,

sometimes in a triangular form, but more frequently in the shape of an

old virginal; of which the keys are so noisy and the tone is so feeble,

that more wood is heard than wire. I found three English harpsichords in

the three principal cities of Italy, which are regarded by the Italians

as so many phenomena."

To this day Italy depends upon foreign countries for her best musical

instruments. Italy can as little make a grand piano as America can

compose a grand opera.

The history of the piano from 1710 to 1867 is nothing but a history of

the improved mechanism of the instrument. The moment the idea was

conceived of striking the strings with hammers, unlimited improvement

was possible; and though the piano of to-day is covered all over with

ingenious devices, the great, essential improvements are few in number.

The hammer, for example, may contain one hundred ingenuities, but they

are all included in the device of covering the first wooden hammers with

cloth; and the master-thought of making the whole frame of the piano of

iron suggested the line of improvement which secures the supremacy of

the piano over all other stringed instruments forever.

Sebastian Erard, the son of a Strasbourg upholsterer, went to Paris, a

poor orphan of sixteen, in the year 1768, and, finding employment in the

establishment of a harpsichord-maker, rose rapidly to the foremanship of

the shop, and was soon in business for himself as a maker of

harpsichords, harps, and pianos. To him, perhaps, more than to any other

individual, the fine interior mechanism of the piano is indebted; and

the house founded by Sebastian Erard still produces the pianos which

enjoy the most extensive reputation in the Old World. He may be said to

have created the "action" of the piano, though his devices have been

subsequently improved upon by others. He found the piano in 1768 feeble

and unknown; he left it, at his death in 1831, the most powerful,

pleasing, and popular stringed instrument in existence; and, besides

gaining a colossal fortune for himself, he bequeathed to his nephew,

Pierre Erard, the most celebrated manufactory of pianos in the world.

Next to Erard ranks John Broadwood, a Scotchman, who came to London

about the time of Erard's arrival in Paris, and, like him, procured

employment with a harpsichord-maker, the most noted one in England. John

Broadwood was a "good apprentice," married his master's daughter,

inherited his business, and carried it on with such success, that,

to-day, the house of Broadwood and Sons is the first of its line in

England. John Broadwood was chiefly meritorious for a _general_

improvement in the construction of the instrument. If he did not

originate many important devices, he was eager to adopt those of others,

and he made the whole instrument with British thoroughness. The strings,

the action, the case, the pedals, and all the numberless details of

mechanism received his thoughtful attention, and show to the present

time traces of his honest and intelligent mind. It was in this John

Broadwood's factory that a poor German boy named John Jacob Astor earned

the few pounds that paid his passage to America, and bought the seven

flutes which were the foundation of the great Astor estate. For several

years, the sale of the Broadwood pianos in New York was an important

part of Mr. Astor's business. He used to sell his furs in London, and

invest part of the proceeds in pianos, for exportation to New York.

America began early to try her hand at improving the instrument. Mr.

Jefferson, in the year 1800, in one of his letters to his daughter

Martha, speaks of "a very ingenious, modest, and poor young man" in

Philadelphia, who "has invented one of the prettiest improvements in

the forte-piano I have ever seen." Mr. Jefferson, who was himself a

player upon the violin, and had some little skill upon the harpsichord,

adds, "It has tempted me to engage one for Monticello." This instrument

was an upright piano, and we have found no mention of an upright of an

earlier date. "His strings," says Mr. Jefferson, "are perpendicular, and

he contrives within that height" (not given in the published extract)

"to give his strings the same length as in the grand forte-piano, and

fixes his three unisons to the same screw, which screw is in the

direction of the strings, and therefore never yields. It scarcely gets

out of tune at all, and then, for the most part, the three unisons are

tuned at once." This is an interesting passage; for, although the

"forte-pianos" of this modest young man have left no trace upon the

history of the instrument, it shows that America had no sooner cast an

eye upon its mechanism than she set to work improving it. Can it be that

the upright piano was an American invention? It may be. The Messrs.

Broadwood, in the little book which lay upon their pianos in the

Exhibition of 1851, say that the first vertical or cabinet pianos were

constructed by William Southwell, of their house, in 1804, four years

after the date of Mr. Jefferson's letter.

After 1800 there were a few pianos made every year in the United States,

but none that could compare with the best Erards and Broadwoods, until

the Chickering era, which began in 1823.

The two Americans to whom music is most indebted in the United States

are Jonas Chickering, piano-maker, born in New Hampshire in 1798, and

Lowell Mason, singing teacher and composer of church tunes, born in

Massachusetts in 1792. While Lowell Mason was creating the taste for

music, Jonas Chickering was improving the instrument by which musical

taste is chiefly gratified; and both being established in Boston, each

of them was instrumental in advancing the fortunes of the other. Mr.

Mason recommended the Chickering piano to his multitudinous classes and

choirs, and thus powerfully aided to give that extent to Mr.

Chickering's business which is necessary to the production of the best

work. Both of them began their musical career, we may say, in childhood;

for Jonas Chickering was only a cabinet-maker's apprentice when he

astonished his native village by putting in excellent playing order a

battered old piano, long before laid aside; and Lowell Mason, at

sixteen, was already leading a large church choir, and drilling a brass

band. The undertaking of this brass band by a boy was an amusing

instance of Yankee audacity; for when the youth presented himself to the

newly formed band to give them their first lesson, he found so many

instruments in their hands which he had never seen nor heard of, that he

could not proceed. "Gentlemen," said he, "I see that a good many of your

instruments are out of order, and most of them need a little oil, or

something of the kind. Our best plan will be to adjourn for a week.

Leave all your instruments with me, and I will have them in perfect

condition by the time we meet again." Before the band again came

together, the young teacher, by working night and day, had gained a

sufficient insight into the nature of the instruments to instruct those

who knew nothing of them.

Jonas Chickering was essentially a mechanic,--a most skilful, patient,

thoughtful, faithful mechanic,--and it was his excellence as a mechanic

which enabled him to rear an establishment which, beginning with one or

two pianos a month, was producing, at the death of the founder, in 1853,

fifteen hundred pianos a year. It was he who introduced into the piano

the full iron frame. It was he who first made American pianos that were

equal to the best imported ones. He is universally recognized as the

true founder of the manufacture of the piano in the United States. No

man has, perhaps, so nobly illustrated the character of the American

mechanic, or more honored the name of American citizen. He was the soul

of benevolence, truth, and honor. When we have recovered a little more

from the infatuation which invests "public men" with supreme importance,

we shall better know how to value those heroes of the apron, who, by a

life of conscientious toil, place a new source of happiness, or of

force, within the reach of their fellow-citizens.

Henry Steinway, the founder of the great house of Steinway and Sons, has

had a career not unlike that of Mr. Chickering. He also, in his native

Brunswick, amused his boyhood by repairing old instruments of music, and

making new ones. He made a cithara and a guitar for himself with only

such tools as a boy can command. He also was apprenticed to a

cabinet-maker, and was drawn away, by natural bias, from the business he

had learned, to the making of organs and pianos. For many years he was a

German piano-maker, producing, in the slow, German manner, two or three

excellent instruments a month; striving ever after higher excellence,

and growing more and more dissatisfied with the limited sphere in which

the inhabitant of a small German state necessarily works. In 1849, being

then past fifty years of age, and the father of four intelligent and

gifted sons, he looked to America for a wider range and a more promising

home for his boys. With German prudence, he sent one of them to New York

to see what prospect there might be there for another maker of pianos.

Charles Steinway came, saw, approved, returned, reported; and in 1850

all the family reached New York, except the eldest son, Theodore, who

succeeded to his father's business in Brunswick. Henry Steinway again

showed himself wise in not immediately going into business. Depositing

the capital he had brought with him in a safe place, he donned once more

the journeyman's apron, and worked for three years in a New York piano

factory to learn the ways of the trade in America; and his sons obtained

similar employment,--one of them, fortunately, becoming a tuner, which

brought him into relations with many music-teachers. During these three

years, their knowledge and their capital increased every day, for they

lived as wise men in such circumstances do live who mean to control

their destiny. In plain English, they kept their eyes open, and lived on

half their income. In 1853, in a small back shop in Varick Street, with

infinite pains, they made their first piano, and a number of teachers

and amateurs were invited to listen to it. It was warmly approved and

speedily sold. Ten men were employed, who produced for the next two

years one piano a week. In 1855, the Messrs. Steinway, still unknown to

the public, placed one of their best instruments in the New York Crystal

Palace Exhibition. A member of the musical jury has recorded the scene

which occurred when the jury came to this unknown competitor:--

"They were pursuing their rounds, and performing their duties with an

ease and facility that promised a speedy termination to their labors,

when suddenly they came upon an instrument that, from its external

appearance,--solidly rich, yet free from the frippery that was then

rather in fashion,--attracted their attention. One of the company opened

the case, and carelessly struck a few chords. The others were doing the

same with its neighbors, but somehow they ceased to chatter when the

other instrument began to speak. One by one the jurors gathered round

the strange polyphonist, and, without a word being spoken, every one

knew that it was the best piano-forte in the Exhibition. The jurors were

true to their duties. It is possible that some of them had predilections

in favor of other makers; it is certain that one of them had,--the

writer of the present notice. But when the time for the award came,

there was no argument, no discussion, no bare presentment of minor

claims; nothing, in fact, but a hearty indorsement of the singular

merits of the strange instrument."

From that time the Steinways made rapid progress. The tide of

California gold was flowing in, and every day some one was getting rich

enough to treat his family to a new piano. It was the Messrs. Steinway

who chiefly supplied the new demand, without lessening by one instrument

a month the business of older houses. Various improvements in the

framing and mechanism of the piano have been invented and introduced by

them; and, while some members of the family have superintended the

manufacture, others have conducted the not less difficult business of

selling. To this hour, the father of the family, in the dress of a

workman, attends daily at the factory, as vigilant and active as ever,

though now past seventy; and his surviving sons are as laboriously

engaged in assisting him as they were in the infancy of the

establishment.

Besides the Chickerings and the Steinways, there are twenty

manufacturers in the United States whose production exceeds one hundred

pianos per annum. Messrs. Knabe & Co. of Baltimore, who supply large

portions of the South and West, sold about a thousand pianos in the year

1866; W. P. Emerson of Boston, 935; Messrs. Haines Brothers of New York,

830; Messrs. Hallett and Davis of Boston, 462; Ernest Gabler of New

York, 312; Messrs. E. C. Lighte & Co. of New York, 286; Messrs. Hazelton

and Brothers of New York, 269; Albert Webber of New York, 266; Messrs.

Decker Brothers of New York, 256; Messrs. George Steck and Co. of New

York, 244; W. I. Bradbury of New York, 244; Messrs. Lindeman and Sons of

New York, 223; the New York Piano-forte Company, 139. About one half of

all the pianos made in the United States are made in the city of New

York.

To visit one of our large manufactories of pianos is a lesson in the

noble art of taking pains. Genius itself, says Carlyle, means, first of

all, "a transcendent capacity for taking trouble." Everywhere in these

vast and interesting establishments we find what we may call the

perfection of painstaking.

The construction of an American piano is a continual act of defensive

warfare against the future inroads of our climate,--a climate which is

polar for a few days in January, tropical for a week or two in July,

Nova-Scotian now and then in November, and at all times most trying to

the finer woods, leathers, and fabrics. To make a piano is now not so

difficult; but to make one that will stand in America,--that is very

difficult. In the rear of the Messrs. Steinway's factory there is a yard

for seasoning timber, which usually contains an amount of material equal

to two hundred and fifty thousand ordinary boards, an inch thick and

twelve feet long; and there it remains from four months to five years,

according to its nature and magnitude. Most of the timber used in an

American piano requires two years' seasoning at least. From this yard it

is transferred to the steam-drying house, where it remains subjected to

a high temperature for three months. The wood has then lost nearly all

the warp there ever was in it, and the temperature may change fifty

degrees in twelve hours (as it does sometimes in New York) without

seriously affecting a fibre. Besides this, the timber is sawed in such a

manner as to neutralize, in some degree, its tendency to warp, or,

rather, so as to make it warp the right way. The reader would be

surprised to hear the great makers converse on this subject of the

warping of timber. They have studied the laws which govern warping; they

know why wood warps, how each variety warps, how long a time each kind

continues to warp, and how to fit one warp against another, so as to

neutralize both. If two or more pieces of wood are to be glued together,

it is never done at random; but they are so adjusted that one will tend

to warp one way, and another another. Even the thin veneers upon the

case act as a restraining force upon the baser wood which they cover,

and in some parts of the instrument the veneer is double for the purpose

of keeping both in order. An astonishing amount of thought and

experiment has been expended upon this matter of warping,--so much,

that now not a piece of wood is employed in a piano, the grain of which

does not run in the precise direction which experience has shown to be

the best.

The forests of the whole earth have been searched for woods adapted to

the different parts of the instrument. Dr. Rimbault, in his learned

"History of the Piano-forte," published recently in London, gives a

catalogue of the various woods, metals, skins, and fabrics used in the

construction of a piano, which forcibly illustrates the delicacy of the

modern instrument and the infinite care taken in its manufacture. We

copy the list, though some of the materials differ from those used by

American manufacturers.

MATERIALS. WHERE USED.

_Woods._ _From_

Oak Riga Framing, various parts.

Deal Norway Wood-bracing, &c.

Fir Switzerland Sounding-board.

Pine America Parts of framing, key-bed

or bottom.

Mahogany Honduras Solid wood of top, and various

parts of the framing

and the action.

Beech England Wrest-plank, bridge or

sound-board, centre of

legs.

Beef-wood Brazils Tongues in the beam,

forming the divisions

between the hammers.

Birch Canada Belly-rail, a part of the

framing.

Cedar S. America Round shanks of hammers.

Lime-tree England Keys.

Pear-tree ---- Heads of dampers.

Sycamore ---- Hoppers or levers, veneers

on wrest-plank.

Ebony Ceylon Black keys.

Spanish \

Mahogany Cuba \

Rosewood Rio Janeiro |

Satinwood East Indies |-- For decoration.

White Holly England |

Zebra-wood Brazils |

Other fancy /

woods /

_Woollen Fabrics._

Baize; green, blue,

and brown Upper surface of key-frame,

cushions for hammers to fall

on, to damp dead part of

strings, &c.

Cloth, various qualities For various parts of the action

and in other places, to prevent

jarring; also for dampers.

Felt External covering for hammers.

_Leather._

Buffalo Under-covering of hammers-bass.

Saddle " " tenor and treble.

Basil \

Calf |

Doeskin |-- Various parts of action.

Seal |

Sheepskin |

Morocco /

Sole Rings for pedal wires.

_Metal._

Iron \ Metallic bracing, and in various small

Steel |-- screws, springs, centres, pins, &c.,

Brass | &c., throughout the instrument.

Gun metal /

Steel wire Strings.

Steel spun wire Lapped strings.

Covered copper wire " " lowest notes.

_Various._

Ivory White keys.

Black lead To smooth the rubbing surfaces of cloth

or leather in the action.

Glue (of a particular quality \

made expressly for |-- Woodwork throughout.

this trade. /

Beeswax, emery paper, \

glass paper, French polish, |-- Cleaning and finishing.

oil, putty powder, |

spirits of wine, &c., &c. /

Such are the materials used. The processes to which they are subjected

are far more numerous. So numerous are they and so complicated, that the

Steinways, who employ five hundred and twelve men, and labor-saving

machinery which does the work of five hundred men more, aided by three

steam-engines of a hundred and twenty-five, fifty, and twenty-five

horse-power, can only produce from forty-five to fifty-five pianos a

week. The average number is about fifty,--six grand, four upright, and

forty square. The reader has seen, doubtless, a piano with the top taken

off; but perhaps it has never occurred to him what a tremendous _pull_

those fifty to sixty strings are keeping up, day and night, from one

year's end to another. The shortest and thinnest string of all pulls two

hundred and sixty-two pounds,--about as much as we should care to lift;

and the entire pull of the strings of a grand piano is sixty pounds less

than twenty tons,--a load for twenty cart-horses. The fundamental

difficulty in the construction of a piano has always been to support

this continuous strain. When we look into a piano we see the "iron

frame" so much vaunted in the advertisements, and so splendid with

bronze and gilding; but it is not this thin plate of cast-iron that

resists the strain of twenty tons. If the wires were to pull upon the

iron for one second, it would fly into atoms. The iron plate is screwed

to what is called the "bottom" of the piano, which is a mass of timber

four inches thick, composed of three layers of plank glued together, and

so arranged that the pull of the wires shall be in a line with the grain

of the wood. The iron plate itself is subjected to a long course of

treatment. The rough casting is brought from the foundery, placed under

the drilling-machine, which bores many scores of holes of various sizes

with marvellous rapidity. Then it is smoothed and finished with the

file; next, it is japanned; after which it is baked in an oven for

forty-eight hours. It is then ready for the bronzer and gilder, who

covers the greater part of the surface with a light-yellow bronzing, and

brightens it here and there with gilding. All this long process is

necessary in order to make the plate _retain_ its brilliancy of color.

Upon this solid foundation of timber and iron the delicate instrument is

built, and it is enclosed in a case constructed with still greater care.

To make so large a box, and one so thin, as the case of a piano stand

our summer heats and our furnace heats (still more trying), is a work of

extreme difficulty. The seasoned boards are covered with a double

veneer, designed to counteract all the tendencies to warp; and the

surface is most laboriously polished. It takes three months to varnish

and polish the case of a piano. In such a factory as the Steinways' or

the Chickerings', there will be always six or seven hundred cases

undergoing this expensive process. When the surface of the wood has been

made as smooth as sand-paper can make it, the first coat of varnish is

applied, and this requires eight days to harden. Then all the varnish is

scraped off, except that which has sunk into the pores of the wood. The

second coat is then put on; which, after eight days' drying, is also

scraped away, until the surface of the veneer is laid bare again. After

this four or five coats of varnish are added, at intervals of eight

days, and, finally, the last polish is produced by the hand of the

workman. The object of all this is not merely to produce a splendid and

enduring gloss, but to make the case stand for a hundred years in a room

which is heated by a furnace to seventy degrees by day, and in which

water will freeze at night. During the war, when good varnish cost as

much as the best champagne, the varnish bills of the leading makers were

formidable indeed.

The labor, however, is the chief item of expense. The average wages of

the five hundred and twelve men employed by the Messrs. Steinway is

twenty-six dollars a week. This force, aided by one hundred and two

labor-saving machines, driven by steam-power equivalent to two hundred

horses, produces a piano in one hour and fifteen minutes. A man with the

ordinary tools can make a piano in about four months, but it could not

possibly be as good a one as those produced in the large establishments.

Nor, indeed, is such a feat ever attempted in the United States. The

small makers, who manufacture from one to five instruments a week,

generally, as already mentioned, buy the different parts from persons

who make only parts. It is a business to make the hammers of a piano; it

is another business to make the "action"; another, to make the keys;

another, the legs; another, the cases; another, the pedals. The

manufacture of the hardware used in a piano is a very important branch,

and it is a separate business to sell it. The London Directory

enumerates forty-two different trades and businesses related to the

piano, and we presume there are not fewer in New York. Consequently,

any man who knows enough of a piano to put one together, and can command

capital enough to buy the parts of one instrument, may boldly fling his

sign to the breeze, and announce himself to an inattentive public as a

"piano-forte-maker." The only difficulty is to sell the piano when it is

put together. At present it costs rather more money to sell a piano than

it does to make one.

When the case is finished, all except the final hand-polish, it is taken

to the sounding-board room. The sounding-board--a thin, clear sheet of

spruce under the strings--is the piano's soul, wanting which, it were a

dead thing. Almost every resonant substance in nature has been tried for

sounding-boards, but nothing has been found equal to spruce. Countless

experiments have been made with a view to ascertain precisely the best

way of shaping, arranging, and fixing the sounding-board, the best

thickness, the best number and direction of the supporting ribs; and

every great maker is happy in the conviction that he is a little better

in sounding-boards than any of his rivals. Next, the strings are

inserted; next, the action and the keys. Every one will pause to admire

the hammers of the piano, so light, yet so capable of giving a telling

blow, which evoke all the music of the strings, but mingle with that

music no click, nor thud, nor thump, of their own. The felt employed

varies in thickness from one sixteenth of an inch to an inch and an

eighth, and costs $5.75 in gold per pound. Only Paris, it seems, can

make it good enough for the purpose. Many of the keys have a double

felting, compressed from an inch and a half to three quarters of an

inch, and others again have an outer covering of leather to keep the

strings from cutting the felt. Simple as the finished hammer looks,

there are a hundred and fifty years of thought and experiment in it. It

required half a century to exhaust the different kinds of wood, bone,

and cork; and when, about 1760, the idea was conceived of covering the

hammers with something soft, another century was to elapse before all

the leathers and fabrics had been tried, and felt found to be the _ne

plus ultra_. With regard to the action, or the mechanism by which the

hammers are made to strike the strings, we must refer the inquisitive

reader to the piano itself.

When all the parts have been placed in the case, the instrument falls

into the hands of the "regulator," who inspects, rectifies, tunes,

harmonizes, perfects the whole. Nothing then remains but to convey it to

the store, give it its final polish and its last tuning.

The next thing is to sell it. Six hundred and fifty dollars seems a high

price for a square piano, such as we used to buy for three hundred, and

the "natural cost" of which does not much exceed two hundred dollars.

Fifteen hundred dollars for a grand piano is also rather startling. But

how much tax, does the reader suppose, is paid upon a

fifteen-hundred-dollar grand? It is difficult to compute it; but it does

not fall much below two hundred dollars. The five per cent

manufacturer's tax, which is paid upon the price of the finished

instrument, has also to be paid upon various parts, such as the wire;

and upon the imported articles there is a high tariff. It is computed

that the taxes upon very complicated articles, in which a great variety

of materials are employed, such as carriages, pianos, organs, and fine

furniture, amount to about one eighth of the price. The piano, too, is

an expensive creature to keep, in these times of high rents, and its

fare upon a railroad is higher than that of its owner. We saw, however,

a magnificent piano, the other day, at the establishment of Messrs.

Chickering, in Broadway, for which passage had been secured all the way

to Oregon for thirty-five dollars,--only five dollars more than it would

cost to transport it to Chicago. Happily for us, to whom fifteen hundred

dollars--nay, six hundred and fifty dollars--is an enormous sum of

money, a very good second-hand piano is always attainable for less than

half the original price.

For, reader, you must know that the ostentation of the rich is always

putting costly pleasures within the reach of the refined not-rich. A

piano in its time plays many parts, and figures in a variety of scenes.

Like the more delicate and sympathetic kinds of human beings, it is

naught unless it is valued; but, being valued, it is a treasure beyond

price. Cold, glittering, and dumb, it stands among the tasteless

splendors with which the wealthy ignorant cumber their dreary abodes,--a

thing of ostentation merely,--as uninteresting as the women who surround

it, gorgeously apparelled, but without conversation, conscious of

defective parts of speech. "There is much music, excellent voice, in

that little organ," but there is no one there who can "make it speak."

They may "fret" the noble instrument; they "cannot play upon it."

But a fool and his nine-hundred-dollar piano are soon parted. The red

flag of the auctioneer announces its transfer to a drawing-room

frequented by persons capable of enjoying the refined pleasures. Bright

and joyous is the scene, about half past nine in the evening, when, by

turns, the ladies try over their newest pieces, or else listen with

intelligent pleasure to the performance of a master. Pleasant are the

informal family concerts in such a house, when one sister breaks down

under the difficulties of Thalberg, and yields the piano-stool to the

musical genius of the family, who takes up the note, and, dashing gayly

into the midst of "Egitto," forces a path through the wilderness, takes

the Red Sea like a heroine, bursts at length into the triumphal prayer,

and retires from the instrument as calm as a summer morning. On

occasions of ceremony, too, the piano has a part to perform, though a

humble one. Awkward pauses will occur in all but the best-regulated

parties, and people will get together, in the best houses, who quench

and neutralize one another. It is the piano that fills those pauses, and

gives a welcome respite to the toil of forcing conversation. How could

"society" go on without the occasional interposition of the piano? One

hundred and sixty years ago, in those days beloved and vaunted by

Thackeray, when Louis XIV. was king of France, and Anne queen of

England, society danced, tattled, and gambled. Cards have receded as the

piano has advanced in importance.

From such a drawing-room as this, after a stay of some years, the piano

may pass into a boarding-school, and thence into the sitting-room of a

family who have pinched for two years to buy it. "It must have been,"

says Henry Ward Beecher, "about the year 1820, in old Litchfield,

Connecticut, upon waking one fine morning, that we heard music in the

parlor, and, hastening down, beheld an upright piano, the first we ever

saw or heard of! Nothing can describe the amazement of silence that

filled us. It rose almost to superstitious reverence, and all that day

was a dream and marvel." It is such pianos that are appreciated. It is

in such parlors that the instrument best answers the end of its

creation. There is many a piano in the back room of a little store, or

in the uncarpeted sitting-room of a farm-house, that yields a larger

revenue of delight than the splendid grand of a splendid drawing-room.

In these humble abodes of refined intelligence, the piano is a dear and

honored member of the family.

The piano now has a rival in the United States in that fine instrument

before mentioned, which has grown from the melodeon into the cabinet

organ. We do not hesitate to say, that the cabinet organs of Messrs.

Mason and Hamlin only need to be as generally known as the piano in

order to share the favor of the public equally with it. It seems to us

peculiarly the instrument for _men_. We trust the time is at hand when

it will be seen that it is not less desirable for boys to learn to play

upon an instrument than girls; and how much more a little skill in

performing may do for a man than for a woman! A boy can hardly be a

perfect savage, nor a man a money-maker or a pietist, who has acquired

sufficient command of an instrument to play upon it with pleasure. How

often, when we have been listening to the swelling music of the cabinet

organs at the ware-rooms of Messrs. Mason and Hamlin in Broadway, have

we desired to put one of those instruments in every clerk's

boarding-house room, and tell him to take all the ennui, and half the

peril, out of his life by learning to play upon it! No business man who

works as intensely as we do can keep alive the celestial harmonies

within him,--no, nor the early wrinkles from his face,--without some

such pleasant mingling of bodily rest and mental exercise as playing

upon an instrument.

The simplicity of the means by which music is produced from the cabinet

organ is truly remarkable. It is called a "reed" instrument; which leads

many to suppose that the cane-brake is despoiled to procure its

sound-giving apparatus. Not so. The reed employed is nothing but a thin

strip of brass with a tongue slit in it, the vibration of which causes

the musical sound. One of the reeds, though it produces a volume of

sound only surpassed by the pipes of an organ, weighs about an ounce,

and can be carried in a vest-pocket. In fact, a cabinet organ is simply

an accordeon of immense power and improved mechanism. Twenty years ago,

one of our melodeon-makers chanced to observe that the accordeon

produced a better tone when it was drawn out than when it was pushed in;

and this fact suggested the first great improvement in the melodeon.

Before that time, the wind from the bellows, in all melodeons, was

forced through the reeds. Melodeons on the improved principle were

constructed so that the wind was drawn through the reeds. The credit of

introducing this improvement is due to the well-known firm of Carhart,

Needham, & Co., and it was as decided an improvement in the melodeon as

the introduction of the hammer in the harpsichord.

At this point of development, the instrument was taken up by Messrs.

Mason and Hamlin, who have covered it with improvements, and rendered it

one of the most pleasing musical instruments in the possession of

mankind. When we remarked above, that the American piano was the best in

the world, we only expressed the opinion of others; but now that we

assert the superiority of the American cabinet organ over similar

instruments made in London and Paris, we are communicating knowledge of

our own. Indeed, the superiority is so marked that it is apparent to the

merest tyro in music. During the year 1866, the number of these

instruments produced in the United States by the twenty-five

manufacturers was about fifteen thousand, which were sold for one

million six hundred thousand dollars, or a little more than one hundred

dollars each. Messrs. Mason and Hamlin, who manufacture one fourth of

the whole number, produce thirty-five kinds, varying in power, compass,

and decoration, and in price from seventy-five dollars to twelve

hundred. In the new towns of the great West, the cabinet organ is

usually the first instrument of music to arrive, and, of late years, it

takes its place with the piano in the fashionable drawing-rooms of the

Atlantic States.

Few Americans, we presume, expected that the department of the Paris

Exposition in which the United States should most surpass other nations

would be that appropriated to musical instruments. Even our cornets and

bugles are highly commended in Paris. The cabinet organs, according to

several correspondents, are much admired. We can hardly credit the

assertion of an intelligent correspondent of the Tribune, that the

superiority of the American pianos is not "questioned" by Erard, Pleyel,

and Hertz, but we can well believe that it is acknowledged by the great

players congregated at Paris. The aged Rossini is reported to have said,

after listening to an American piano, "It is like a nightingale cooing

in a thunder-storm."

AN EMBER-PICTURE.

How strange are the freaks of memory!

The lessons of life we forget,

While a trifle, a trick of color,

In the wonderful web is set,--

Set by some mordant of fancy,

And, despite the wear and tear

Of time or distance or trouble,

Insists on its right to be there.

A chance had brought us together;

Our talk was of matters of course;

We were nothing, one to the other,

But a short half-hour's resource.

We spoke of French acting and actors,

And their easy, natural way,--

Of the weather, for it was raining

As we drove home from the play.

We debated the social nothings

Men take such pains to discuss;

The thunderous rumors of battle

Were silent the while for us.

Arrived at her door, we left her

With a drippingly hurried adieu,

And our wheels went crunching the gravel

Of the oak-darkened avenue.

As we drove away through the shadow,

The candle she held in the door,

From rain-varnished tree-trunk to tree-trunk

Flashed fainter, and flashed no more,--

Flashed fainter and wholly faded

Before we had passed the wood;

But the light of the face behind it

Went with me and stayed for good.

The vision of scarce a moment,

And hardly marked at the time,

It comes unbidden to haunt me,

Like a scrap of ballad-rhyme.

Had she beauty? Well, not what they call so:

You may find a thousand as fair,

And yet there's her face in my memory,

With no special right to be there.

As I sit sometimes in the twilight,

And call back to life in the coals

Old faces and hopes and fancies

Long buried,--good rest to their souls!--

Her face shines out of the embers;

I see her holding the light,

And hear the crunch of the gravel

And the sweep of the rain that night.

'Tis a face that can never grow older,

That never can part with its gleam;

'Tis a gracious possession forever,

For what is it all but a dream?

AN ARTIST'S DREAM.

When I reached Kenmure's house, one August evening, it was rather a

disappointment to find that he and his charming Laura had absented

themselves for twenty-four hours. I had not seen them since their

marriage; my admiration for his varied genius and her unvarying grace

was at its height, and I was really annoyed at the delay. My fair

cousin, with her usual exact housekeeping, had prepared everything for

her guest, and then bequeathed me, as she wrote, to Janet and baby

Marian. It was a pleasant arrangement, for between baby Marian and me

there existed a species of passion, I might almost say of betrothal,

ever since that little three-year-old sunbeam had blessed my mother's

house by lingering awhile in it, six months before. Still I went to bed

disappointed, though the delightful windows of the chamber looked out

upon the glimmering bay, and the swinging lanterns at the yard-arms of

the frigates shone like some softer constellation beneath the brilliant

sky. The house was so close upon the water that the cool waves seemed to

plash deliciously against its very basement; and it was a comfort to

think that, if there were no adequate human greetings that night, there

would be plenty in the morning, since Marian would inevitably be pulling

my eyelids apart before sunrise.

It seemed scarcely dawn when I was roused by a little arm round my neck,

and waked to think I had one of Raphael's cherubs by my side. Fingers of

waxen softness were ruthlessly at work upon my eyes, and the little form

that met my touch felt lithe and elastic, like a kitten's limbs. There

was just light enough to see the child, perched on the edge of the bed,

her soft blue dressing-gown trailing over the white night-dress, while

her black and long-fringed eyes shone through the dimness of morning.

She yielded gladly to my grasp, and I could fondle again the silken

hair, the velvety brunette cheek, the plump, childish shoulders. Yet

sleep still half held me, and when my cherub appeared to hold it a

cherubic practice to begin the day with a demand for lively anecdote, I

was fain drowsily to suggest that she might first tell some stories to

her doll. With the sunny readiness that was a part of her nature, she

straightway turned to that young lady,--plain Susan Halliday, with both

cheeks patched, and eyes of different colors,--and soon discoursed both

her and me into repose.

When I waked again, it was to find the child conversing with the morning

star, which still shone through the window, scarcely so lucent as her

eyes, and bidding it go home to its mother, the sun. Another lapse into

dreams, and then a more vivid awakening, and she had my ear at last, and

won story after story, requiting them with legends of her own youth,

"almost a year ago,"--how she was perilously lost, for instance, in the

small front yard, with a little playmate, early in the afternoon, and

how they came and peeped into the window, and thought all the world had

forgotten them. Then the sweet voice, distinct in its articulation as

Laura's, went straying off into wilder fancies, a chaos of autobiography

and conjecture, like the letters of a war correspondent. You would have

thought her little life had yielded more pangs and fears than might have

sufficed for the discovery of the North Pole; but breakfast-time drew

near at last, and Janet's honest voice was heard outside the door. I

rather envied the good Scotchwoman the pleasant task of polishing the

smooth cheeks, and combing the dishevelled silk; but when, a little

later, the small maiden was riding down stairs in my arms, I envied no

one.

At sight of the bread and milk, my cherub was transformed into a hungry

human child, chiefly anxious to reach the bottom of her porringer. I was

with her a great deal that day. She gave no manner of trouble: it was

like having the charge of a floating butterfly, endowed with warm arms

to clasp, and a silvery voice to prattle. I sent Janet out to sail, with

the other servants, by way of holiday, and Marian's perfect temperament

was shown in the way she watched the departing.

"There they go," she said, as she stood and danced at the window. "Now

they are out of sight."

"What!" I said, "are you pleased to have your friends go?"

"Yes," she answered; "but I shall be pleased--er to see them come

back." Life to her was no alternation of joy and grief, but only of joy

and more joyous.

Twilight brought us to an improvised concert. Climbing the piano-stool,

she went over the notes with her little taper fingers, touching the keys

in a light, knowing way, that proved her a musician's child. Then I must

play for her, and let the dance begin. This was a wondrous performance

on her part, and consisted at first in hopping up and down on one spot,

with no change of motion, but in her hands. She resembled a minute and

irrepressible Shaker, or a live and beautiful _marionnette_. Then she

placed Janet in the middle of the floor, and performed the dance round

her, after the manner of Vivien and Merlin. Then came her supper, which,

like its predecessors, was a solid and absorbing meal; then one more

fairy story, to magnetize her off, and she danced and sang herself up

stairs. And if she first came to me in the morning with a halo round her

head, she seemed still to retain it when I at last watched her kneeling

in the little bed--perfectly motionless, with her hands placed together,

and her long lashes sweeping her cheeks--to repeat two verses of a hymn

which Janet had taught her. My nerves quivered a little when I saw that

Susan Halliday had also been duly prepared for the night, and had been

put in the same attitude, so far as her jointless anatomy permitted.

This being ended, the doll and her mistress reposed together, and only

an occasional toss of the vigorous limbs, or a stifled baby murmur,

would thenceforth prove, through the darkened hours, that the one figure

had in it more of life than the other.

On the next morning Kenmure and Laura came back to us, and I walked down

to receive them at the boat. I had forgotten how striking was their

appearance, as they stood together. His broad, strong, Saxon look, his

noble bearing and clear blue eyes, enhanced the fascination of her

darker beauty.

America is full of the short-lived bloom and freshness of girlhood; but

grace is a rarer gift, and indeed it is only a few times in life that

one sees anywhere a beauty that really controls us with a permanent

charm. One should remember such personal loveliness, as one recalls some

particular moonlight or sunset, with a special and concentrated joy,

which the multiplicity of fainter impressions cannot disturb. When in

those days we used to read, in Petrarch's one hundred and twenty-third

sonnet, that he had once beheld on earth angelic manners and celestial

charms, whose very remembrance was a delight and an affliction, since

all else that he beheld seemed dream and shadow, we could easily fancy

that nature had certain permanent attributes which accompanied the name

of Laura.

Our Laura had that rich brunette beauty before which the mere snow and

roses of the blonde must always seem wan and unimpassioned. In the

superb suffusions of her cheek there seemed to flow a tide of passions

and powers, which might have been tumultuous in a meaner woman, but over

which, in her, the clear and brilliant eyes, and the sweet, proud mouth,

presided in unbroken calm. These superb tints implied resources only,

not a struggle. With this torrent from the tropics in her veins, she was

the most equable person I ever saw; and had a supreme and delicate

good-sense, which, if not supplying the place of genius, at least

comprehended its work. Not intellectually gifted herself, perhaps, she

seemed the cause of gifts in others, and furnished the atmosphere in

which all showed their best. With the steady and thoughtful enthusiasm

of her Puritan ancestors, she combined that grace which is so rare among

their descendants,--a grace which fascinated the humblest, while it

would have been just the same in the society of kings. And her person

had the equipoise and symmetry of her mind. While abounding in separate

points of beauty, each a source of distinct and peculiar pleasure,--as

the outline of her temples, the white line that parted her night-black

hair, the bend of her wrists, the moulding of her finger-tips,--yet

these details were lost in the overwhelming gracefulness of her

presence, and the atmosphere of charm which she diffused over all human

life.

A few days passed rapidly by us. We walked and rode and boated and read.

Little Marian came and went, a living sunbeam, a self-sufficing thing.

It was soon obvious that she was far less demonstrative towards her

parents than towards me; while her mother, gracious to her as to all,

yet rarely caressed her, and Kenmure, though habitually kind, seemed

rather to ignore her existence, and could scarcely tolerate that she

should for one instant preoccupy his wife. For Laura he lived, and she

must live for him. He had a studio, which I rarely entered and Marian

never, while Laura was constantly there; and after the first cordiality

was past, I observed that their daily expeditions were always arranged

for two. The weather was beautiful, and they led the wildest outdoor

life, cruising all day or all night among the islands, regardless of

hours, and, as it sometimes seemed to me, of health. No matter: Kenmure

liked it, and what he liked she loved. When at home, they were chiefly

in the studio, he painting, modelling, poetizing perhaps, and she

inseparably united with him in all. It was very beautiful, this

unworldly and passionate love, and I could have borne to be omitted in

their daily plans, since little Marian was left to me, save that it

seemed so strange to omit her also. Besides, there grew to be something

a little oppressive in this peculiar atmosphere; it was like living in a

greenhouse.

Yet they always spoke in the simplest way of this absorbing passion, as

of something about which no reticence was needed; it was too sacred

_not_ to be mentioned; it would be wrong not to utter freely to all the

world what was doubtless the best thing the world possessed. Thus

Kenmure made Laura his model in all his art; not to coin her into wealth

or fame,--he would have scorned it; he would have valued fame and

wealth only as instruments for proclaiming her. Looking simply at these

two lovers, then, it seemed as if no human union could be more noble or

stainless. Yet so far as others were concerned, it sometimes seemed to

me a kind of duplex selfishness, so profound and so undisguised as to

make one shudder. "Is it," I asked myself at such moments, "a great

consecration, or a great crime?" But something must be allowed, perhaps,

for my own private dissatisfactions in Marian's behalf.

I had easily persuaded Janet to let me have a peep every night at my

darling, as she slept; and once I was surprised to find Laura sitting by

the small white bed. Graceful and beautiful as she always was, she never

before had seemed to me so lovely, for she never had seemed quite like a

mother. But I could not demand a sweeter look of tenderness than that

with which she now gazed upon her child.

Little Marian lay with one brown, plump hand visible from its full white

sleeve, while the other nestled half hid beneath the sheet, grasping a

pair of blue morocco shoes, the last acquisition of her favorite doll.

Drooping from beneath the pillow hung a handful of scarlet poppies,

which the child had wished to place under her head, in the very

superfluous project of putting herself to sleep thereby. Her soft brown

hair was scattered on the sheet, her black lashes lay motionless upon

the olive cheeks. Laura wished to move her, that I might see her the

better.

"You will wake her," exclaimed I, in alarm.

"Wake this little dormouse?" Laura lightly answered. "Impossible."

And, twining her arms about her, the young mother lifted the child from

the bed, three or four times, dropping her again heavily each time,

while the healthy little creature remained utterly undisturbed,

breathing the same quiet breath. I watched Laura with amazement; she

seemed transformed.

She gayly returned my eager look, and then, seeming suddenly to

penetrate its meaning, cast down her radiant eyes, while the color

mounted into her cheeks. "You thought," she said, almost sternly, "that

I did not love my child."

"No," I said, half untruthfully.

"I can hardly wonder," she continued, more sadly, "for it is only what I

have said to myself a thousand times. Sometimes I think that I have

lived in a dream, and one that few share with me. I have questioned

others, and never yet found a woman who did not admit that her child was

more to her, in her secret soul, than her husband. What can they mean?

Such a thought is foreign to my nature."

"Why separate the two?" I asked.

"I _must_ separate them," she answered, with the air of one driven to

bay by her own self-reproaching. "I had, like other young girls, my

dream of love and marriage. Unlike all the rest, I believe, my visions

were fulfilled. The reality was more than the imagination; and I thought

it would be so with my love for my child. The first cry of that baby

told the difference to my ear. I knew it all from that moment; the bliss

which had been mine as a wife would never be mine as a mother. If I had

not known what it was to love my husband, I might have been content with

my love for Marian. But look at that exquisite creature as she lies

there asleep, and then think that I, her mother, should desert her if

she were dying, for aught I know, at one word from him!"

"Your feeling is morbid," I said, hardly knowing what to answer.

"What good does it serve to know that?" she said, defiantly. "I say it

to myself every day. Once when she was ill, and was given back to me in

all the precious helplessness of babyhood, there was such a strange

sweetness in it, I thought the charm might remain; but it vanished when

she could run about once more. And she is such a healthy, self-reliant

little thing," added Laura, glancing toward the bed with a momentary

look of motherly pride that seemed strangely out of place amid these

self-denunciations.

"I wish her to be so," she added. "The best service I can do for her is

to teach her to stand alone. And at some day," continued the beautiful

woman, her whole face lighting up with happiness, "she may love as I

have loved."

"And your husband," I said, after a pause,--"does your feeling represent

his?"

"My husband," she said, "lives for his genius, as he should. You that

know him, why do you ask?"

"And his heart?" I said, half frightened at my own temerity.

"Heart?" she answered. "He loves _me_."

Her color mounted higher yet; she had a look of pride, almost of

haughtiness. All else seemed forgotten; she had turned away from the

child's little bed, as if it had no existence. It flashed upon me that

something of the poison of her artificial atmosphere was reaching her

already.

Kenmure's step was heard in the hall, and, with fire in her eyes, she

hastened to meet him. I seemed actually to breathe freer after the

departure of that enchanting woman, in danger of perishing inwardly, I

said to myself, in an air too lavishly perfumed. Bending over Marian, I

wondered if it were indeed possible that a perfectly healthy life had

sprung from that union too intense and too absorbed. Yet I had often

noticed that the child seemed to wear the temperaments of both her

parents as a kind of playful disguise, and to peep at you, now out of

the one, now from the other, showing that she had her own individual

life behind.

As if by some infantine instinct, the darling turned in her sleep, and

came unconsciously nearer me. With a half-feeling of self-reproach, I

drew around my neck, inch by inch, the little arms that tightened with a

delicious thrill; and so I half reclined there till I myself dozed, and

the watchful Janet, looking in, warned me away. Crossing the entry to my

own chamber, I heard Kenmure and Laura down stairs, but I knew that I

should be superfluous, and felt that I was sleepy.

I had now, indeed, become always superfluous when they were together,

though never when they were apart. Even they must be separated

sometimes, and then each sought me, in order to discourse about the

other. Kenmure showed me every sketch he had ever made of Laura. There

she was, in all the wonderful range of her beauty,--in clay, in cameo,

in pencil, in water-color, in oils. He showed me also his poems, and, at

last, a longer one, for which pencil and graver had alike been laid

aside. All these he kept in a great cabinet she had brought with her to

their housekeeping; and it seemed to me that he also treasured every

flower she had dropped, every slender glove she had worn, every ribbon

from her hair. I could not wonder. Who would not thrill at the touch of

some such memorial of Mary of Scotland, or of Heloise? and what was all

the regal beauty of the past to him? Every room always seemed adorned

when she was in it, empty when she had gone,--save that the trace of her

still seemed left on everything, and all appeared but as a garment she

had worn. It seemed that even her great mirror must retain, film over

film, each reflection of her least movement, the turning of her head,

the ungloving of her hand. Strange! that, with all this intoxicating

presence, she yet led a life so free from self, so simple, so absorbed,

that all trace of consciousness was excluded, and she seemed

unsophisticated as her own child.

As we were once thus employed in the studio, I asked Kenmure, abruptly,

if he never shrank from the publicity he was thus giving Laura. "Madame

Récamier was not quite pleased," I said, "that Canova had modelled her

bust, even from imagination. Do you never shrink from permitting

irreverent eyes to look on Laura's beauty? Think of men as you know

them. Would you give each of them her miniature, perhaps to go with them

into scenes of riot and shame?"

"Would to Heaven I could!" said he, passionately. "What else could save

them, if that did not? God lets his sun shine on the evil and on the

good, but the evil need it most."

There was a pause; and then I ventured to ask him a question that had

been many times upon my lips unspoken.

"Does it never occur to you," I said, "that Laura cannot live on earth

forever?"

"You cannot disturb me about that," he answered, not sadly, but with a

set, stern look, as if fencing for the hundredth time against an

antagonist who was foredoomed to be his master in the end. "Laura will

outlive me; she must outlive me. I am so sure of it, that, every time I

come near her, I pray that I may not be paralyzed, and die outside her

arms. Yet, in any event, what can I do but what I am doing,--devote my

whole soul to the perpetuation of her beauty, through art? It is my only

dream. What else is worth doing? It is for this I have tried, through

sculpture, through painting, through verse, to depict her as she is.

Thus far I have failed. Why have I failed? Is it because I have not

lived a life sufficiently absorbed in her? or is it that there is no

permitted way by which, after God has reclaimed her, the tradition of

her perfect loveliness may be retained on earth?"

The blinds of the piazza doorway opened, the sweet sea-air came in, the

low and level rays of yellow sunset entered as softly as if the breeze

were their chariot; and softer and stiller and sweeter than light or

air, little Marian stood on the threshold. She had been in the fields

with Janet, who had woven for her breeze-blown hair a wreath of the wild

gerardia blossoms, whose purple beauty had reminded the good Scotchwoman

of her own native heather. In her arms the child bore, like a little

gleaner, a great sheaf of graceful golden-rod, as large as her grasp

could bear. In all the artist's visions he had seen nothing so aerial,

so lovely; in all his passionate portraitures of his idol, he had

delineated nothing so like to her. Marian's cheeks mantled with rich and

wine-like tints, her hair took a halo from the sunbeams, her lips

parted over the little milk-white teeth; she looked at us with her

mother's eyes. I turned to Kenmure to see if he could resist the

influence.

He scarcely gave her a glance. "Go, Marian," he said,--not impatiently,

for he was too thoroughly courteous ever to be ungracious, even to a

child,--but with a steady indifference that cut me with more pain than

if he had struck her.

The sun dropped behind the horizon, the halo faded from the shining

hair, and every ray of light from the childish face. There came in its

place that deep, wondering sadness which is more pathetic than any

maturer sorrow,--just as a child's illness touches our hearts more than

that of man or woman, it seems so premature and so plaintive. She turned

away; it was the very first time I had ever seen the little face drawn

down, or the tears gathering in the eyes. By some kind providence, the

mother met Marian on the piazza, herself flushed and beautiful with

walking, and caught the little thing in her arms with unwonted

tenderness. It was enough for the elastic child. After one moment of

such bliss she could go to Janet, go anywhere; and when the same

graceful presence came in to us in the studio, we also could ask no

more.

We had music and moonlight, and were happy. The atmosphere seemed more

human, less unreal. Going up stairs at last, I looked in at the nursery,

and found my pet seeming rather flushed, and I fancied that she stirred

uneasily. It passed, whatever it was; for next morning she came in to

wake me, looking, as usual, as if a new heaven and earth had been coined

purposely for her since she went to sleep. We had our usual long and

important discourse,--this time tending to protracted narrative, of the

Mother-Goose description,--until, if it had been possible for any human

being to be late for breakfast in that house, we should have been the

offenders. But she ultimately went down stairs on my shoulder, and, as

Kenmure and Laura were out rowing, the baby put me in her own place,

sat in her mother's chair, and ruled me with a rod of iron. How

wonderful was the instinct by which this little creature, who so seldom

heard one word of parental severity or parental fondness, yet knew so

thoroughly the language of both! Had I been the most depraved of

children, or the most angelic, I could not have been more sternly

excluded from the sugar-bowl, or more overwhelmed with compensating

kisses.