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lual Inferiority (if the male mind will
Intcieept anything headed in the
direction of this young man so con
spicuously isolated from his sex.
"Not that there is ttiis actual dis
proportion between the mind of man
and the mind of woman. Many of
the voting men who come to Lincoln
for the ostensible purpose of acquir
ing an education and who write dole
ful letters home concerning their
preoccupation in books and laboratory
work, are, in reality ehielly concerned
first in the details of their wardrobe,
secondly in the plans of their fra
ternity to scoop another one, thirdly
in their feminine acquaintance and
lastly in their university course. The
prize of their-ealling, which Is per
haps more the acquisition of cu'turc
than the recognition of It by any
fraternity, is, in many cases, ignored.
Among the men who have ability and
might become scholars there is still
lacking incentive strong enough to
make them corrivals of sensitive, am
bitious young women who do not for
get so easily the reason for their pres
ence in the university.
Mr. Moody.
He had no title and he had no right
to atllx initial letters to his s'gnature.
He never missed them, though if he
had possessed the learning which
they arc supposed to represent his
popularity, and the brightness and
magnetism of his personal presence
might have prolonged the vogue of
evangelists. He understood very well
the art of putting an audience into a
good humor before asking favors. He
was an inimitable storyteller. He
had the same temperamental eom
radery that May Irwin has. Like her
he was big and wholesome and in
tensely human. But except for the
emotions which a generous, lov
ing, magnetic temperament can cause
Mr. Moody's usefulness was over with
the passing of the evangelists.
Among lecturers and preachers he
was what a collection of anecdotes is
among books. His power was the
power of temperament. His diction,
though not. pure, was nearly always
lucid. His fancy played on the ser
face of things. He was a vivid color
1st, ho understood the dramatic force
of contrascs. He had a wonderful
memory and as he went to and fro on
the earth he gathered a unique and
valuable collection of anecdotes and
his addresses consisted of these anec
dotes strung on a slender thread of ex
hortation. Ills appeals were made
more direct and tender by the songs
written in the first and second person.
These Moody and Sankey tunes
with the words have the rythm of
negro melodies and the eame under
tone of threatening to the unrepen
tant and of golden streets or gold
en slippers to converts. By exploit
ing his temperament and a generous
use of the songs Mr. Moody was able
to induce the larger part of any
audience to rise either in the group
of Christians or sinners, into which
he invariably divided his hearers.
By these means ho was able to pick
out those who really needed assist
ance and there Is no doubt that scoff
ers were moro immediately rescued
by this, apparently, ratner impertin
ent method. Although many of the
Moody converts slipped back Into evil
ways as soon as Mr. Moody's en
couraging voice had ceased to sound
in their ears, there are thousands and
tens of thousands who owe their
spiritual beginnings and their pres
ent spiritual evolution to Mr. Moody.
The fasuion is past and we are of a
different way of thinking now but
Mr. Moody helped the world along.
It is better because of him. Ho was
the inspiration of thousands of good
deeds. Men and women think of him
with gratitude and sincerely mourn
his death. He delivered the message
faithfully and according to the best
of liability. Many a man with a
larger brain and ni"rc culture has
lived and died and left no human be
ing to say "because of him I am
better."
The faith which was absolute and
never wavered was another source of
Mr. Moody's influence. He was sure
that his thoughts of God and Heaven
and his interpretation or the Bible
were correct. He believed in the
verbal inspiration of the scriptures
and ridiculed any other belief. What
ever his opinion, on any subject he
was sure it was right and postivlsm
converts by Its own force to whatever
doctrine the posltlvist cares to teach.
: THE PASSING SHOW:
WILLACATHER f
tMHMMMMIMMHHMHHIHOOCMl
Two Pianists.
So Joseffy has come fortti from his
retirement at last, come fortli no whit
older, with the same wonder in his
hands and the same severity of coun
tenance. He takes to the ground pe
riodically and buries himself, giving
lessons and studying and abjuring
concerts. This time he has come out
of his shell with the marks of hard
work on him, and he even plays the
heavier sonatas of Brahms, and even
that one stupendous sonata of Tschai
kowsky's at his recitals now. One
never used to rind such ambitious and
noisy people on his programs. I had
not heard hlm.for five years, and I
somehow expected him to be very
much older, but the man must be on
good terms with life. When he step
ped upon the platform, I could see no
trace of embonpoint to detract from
the dignity of his figure; his hair,
though cut, close, purled about his
high forehead in the way it used to
do, und his hands, those white, shape
ly, elegant hands that colorists have
loved to paint, swept the air with the
same curt, apologetic gesture, the
hands of a gentleman and an artist.
There was of old a sort of atmosphere
of retirement and self-respect about
this man that he still retains and
that somehow makes one feel certain
that he would never be implicated in
dog-tights, or lost by his manager, or
elope with a restaurateur's daughter
to find a royal road to fame. There is,
too, a certain distinction of manners,
a certain aristocracy of the Race of
Song, a classic grace and repose that
goes well with that very poetic name,
Raphael Joseffy.
His first number was the Brahms'
sonata in F minor. I heard Rosen
thal play it lust winter and I have
heard Ethelbert Nevln play the An
dante and scherzo and intermezzo
often and often. Then I have heard
Eugene Hcflloy, who is us big as Sieve
king and as strong as Sandow, bang
splendid crescendosand build up great
tonal cathedrals out of the allegro.
Joseffy played it as I had expected,
unevenly. He did not, I think, rise
to the almost impossible possibilities
of the allegro, and even Ills playing of
ttie scherzo seemed to lack breadth of
treatment. It is not that the allegro
is without melody, that it is all musi
cal dynamics and shrapnel, that
makes It so difficult of execution.
Thoro arc no mannerisms which de
mand that ttie performer surrender
his soul and better judgment, no in
verted difficulties, noobscurities. The
difficulty in the F minor sonata, as in
all Brahms', Is simply a difficulty of
dimension. He is hard of complete
approhenson, simply because he is
many-sided and big on all sides, bo
cause to master one of his sonatas,
you must unravel it, like the cable of
a war ship. When people of a merely
external knowledge of music and liter
ature speak of Brahms or Browning,
they refer to their "obscurity" as
though it were a quality of their
work, whereas it Is merely a matter
of the quantity of the man's ideas,
the teeming fertility of his brain,
from which thought comes, not a
clear and lucid stream, but it gushes
torrent-wise, confused and confounded
by its own turbulence and mass. If
Browning had dug no deeper into the
roots of things than Tennyson, I have
no doubt that his meaning would al
ways bo as clear. If Brahms' piano
compositions were not packed as they
are with the very brain-stuff and soul
stuff, out of which music Is made, I
have no doubt that they could be
played ascaslly as Felix Mendelssohn's.
When people fall to play Brahms well,
it is simply because their reach is not
long enough; they may be artists and
true followers of the Prophet, and yet
not equal to this system of prodigious
intellectual gymnasticsfor intellect
ual gymnastics they are, not digital
gymnastics. It seemed to me that
Joseffy simply looked at the allegro
through the wrong end of the opera
glass He did not make it big enough.
His prime excellence lies in the grace,
the quality, the timbre of his playing,
and there is no reason why he should
go forthwith Brahms to slay. His
allegro lacked brilliancy, breadth, va
riation, contrast, power. It was not
big enough.
The andante he ulayed much, much
better than I have ever heaid it,
and if any one doubted ttiat Raphael
Joseffy is a poet, he knew better then,.
Ah, that andante! Heine knew mo
ments as sweet, Tennyson and Paul
Verlaine both knew that alluring,
mystic shimmer of Romance, that
fair uncertain light that comes song
laden from the past. The man at the
piano sat weaving this poem, paint
ing this landscape, making ihe brain
quiver under the new, indefinite, ten
der sensations which he looked. He
sat there calling out those clear, pure
silver tones, silver as the waters of
the lake whence Arthur drew Excal
ibur, silver as the armor that the
knights of the Grail wore, silver as
the moonlight that sleeps on the moss
banks under the frosty pines of the
North German forests. One felt as
though it ought to be possible to
catch those tones and hold them, to
gather them up In some way and not
let them waste away in empty air
like that. As he sat there, ills fingers
making those limpid sounds, those
crystal tones, I thought of Midas,
that Cretan king, whose Angers turned
all that he touched into shining gold.
Then came the hopin music that
Joseffy plays with sucli deference,
such understanding, such discrimina
tion; Ballad No. 4, a mazurka, that
strange posthumous waltz that is so
little heard, and a polonaise, one of
those "cannons burled In flowers."
The second part of the program was
wholly given up to Tschalkowsky's
colossal sonata, the opus 37, which is
fifty pages long, and which treats the
piano in a fashion that should be ans
wered by a charge of assault and bat
tery. It is not piano music at all; It
is a sonata for the orchestra, an at
tempt to batter orchestral work out
of the black and white keys. And the
piano was avenged, for the sonata has
been practically dead for years and
Joseffy is one of the few men who
have revived It for concert purposes.
It was with one of his pupils that 1
went to hear Vladmlr do Pachmann,
''When you have heard him," lie said,
"you will have heard the best living
player of Chopin, and you will have
heard one of the men who make the
history of art, an artist to ills finger
tips, vain as a woman, whimsical as a
child, gifted as one of the sons of
light '' Although he no longer affects
the long black hair and beard which
once concealed Ills countenance and
made him look like a Will II. Bradley
illustration to a Stephen Crane puctn,
there is no mistaking the Russian
pianist's vocation. He wears his hair
brushed straight back now, very much
a la Toby Rex. and ills heavy body and
broad, powerful shoulders look queer
enough on the absurdly short legs
which toddle them about. His feet
arc small and lie Is very vain of them.
''But then," remarked the Pachmann
pupil, "he is ,'aln of everything; lie is
the vainest man I ever knew, and
when I was with him I was almost as
vain of him as he was of himself. One
falls under the enchantment of the
man and Pachmannism becomes a
mystic cult, an intellectuul religion, a
new sort of theosophy. His pupils
usually copy his walk, his gestures,
I think I used even to wish I had his
nose and his little silts of Tartar eyes.
But listen!"
He first played Weber's sonata in A
flat, wishing, x supose, to give a certi
licateof his.general musicianship and
his complete dominion over his in
strument before he began to "special
ize." But in thut, as in his Chopin
numbers, one noticed first his unex
pectedness. He does not deign to play
a number as you have heard it before.
He has a technique full of tricks and
wonderful feats of skill, full of tanta
lizing pauses and willful subordina
tions and smothered notes cut short
so suddenly that ho seems to have
drawn them back into his fingers
again. In his thin and Learded days
he looked like a wizard of the Svengall
type, and even now is not unlike the
portly, comfortable raaglchnsjof the
Eastern fairy tales. The magician re
semblance keeps occurring to one as
he plays. He Is very much of a trick
ster, in spite of that fiery quality, that
temperamental intensity. But it is
an intellectual variety of trickery, a
sort of impassioned slight of hand.
There Is Indeed a kind of bravado
about the astonishing liberty lie per
mits himself In the matter of phras
ing, and when he did something par
ticularly sturtllng he would look
down at his pupil and screw up his
brows and wrinkle his nose and wink
slyly with one of his little Tartareyes,
very mucli us Jack Horner must have
done when he pulled out the plum and
said, "What a great boy am I."
It was not until lie began playing
the third prelude of Chopin that the
Pachmann pupil utterly collapsed and
murmured, "The tone the singing
tone! Hih own tone!" And singing
tones they were; living things that
lived a glorious instant of life and f
died under Ills fingers, "trembling, "
passed In music out of sight." The
Pachmann pupil assured me that no
one else had ever been able to produco
a tone just like that, and ho remark
ed that that peculiar bird like tone
would die with Vladimir do Pach
mann, and then ho told me a funny
story of this quaint Russian egotist.
When lie was in Pittsburg on his last
American tour, ho was playing tlio
Chopin Valso Brllllanto,opus34, to a
crowd of muslcluns in a wholesulo
music store here. Ho played even
better than usual, and when ho had
finished, he looked up and said with
u sigh und a gesture of ineffable re
gret, "Ah, who will play like that
when Pachmonn is no more!" There
wore uctually tears in Ills eyes, for lioV'i
was overcomo with tlio sense of the f
great loss which the world must sonio
day suffer.
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