Omaha daily bee., 1889-06-09
THE GHOSTS WAY.

in the New York Herald. / am nothing
but plain musician, yet l was once
considered great one. That was when
lived on Third street, in suite OF
rooms so small that my piano and bird
cages left hardly room for me to turn
around. They called my rooms The
Aviary" then. Now am well-to-do-
rich in fact, for bachelor-and 1 owe
my riches to the strangest circumstances
that ever befel man Of my prosaic ma
ture.
l am diffident, shy man-have very
few friends. Ivans, the drummer IN
the orchestra Tommy, as he is usually
called), and Skab. the manager of the
theater, are my only intimate friends.
How they came to be this little story
will tell you.
/ had been leading the orchestra for
two years, and it was on the night of
October 81, 1SS-, that experienced a
sensation which gives existence to this
narrative. l did not often use the open
piano before me. but this particular
night we were one or two men short
and needed the noise. The piano and
l supplied the lack in that particular.
We were playing waltz in the inter-
val between the fourth and fifth acts of
lurid melodrama, and | was banging
away in tempo di valse steadily as you
please, playing almost mechanically as
one is apt to play fashionable waltz
music.
All of sudden something-it was
something, and yet cannot say what it
was-took hold Of my hands and dashed
them violently down on the keys. 1t
was just as if some one had reached
long arms around me, and seized my
hands and banged them on the key
board. My hands felt numb and chill.
and I verify believe l should have
thought myself paralyzed but for the
actual sense of strong hands grasping
my own, overpowering them and cast
ing them with a great crash of sound
upon the piano.
Amid the profoundest silence, my
hands, guided by this unseen agency,
played this waltz with a perfection of
time, an eXquisiteness of touch,
thorough appreciation of its beauty, and
brought out in the most subtitle. way
meanings Inever dreamed lay hidden in
the score. 1t was as beautiful as it was
awful, and even in my terror-which was
something to feel, not to describe-I
felt that the music was rendered by
something which had once been mas
ter's soul.
The bell tinkled for the customary
slow music for the curtain, but the cur
tain was up and the villain of the piece
on the stage ere my hands ceased play
ing. The last two bars were indeed
soft and sweet and low, dying awake
I II oh ~ lA Loot
note ceased fell from the stool bathed
in a cold, clammy sweat, too insensible
to heed the wild and tumultuous ap-
plause that came from pit, boxes and
gallery, the loud shouts of encore and
the sharp clapping of the hands of my
own musicians.
never closed my eyes during the
entire night. That week was the most
feverish of my existence.
Skab's willingness to risk money on
me, and my desire to prevent him los
ing anything reconclled me more than
anything else to the ordeal had to un-
dergo, but suffered tortures in the in
tervals between the day signed the
contract and the night of the 18th of
November.
l will not attempt to describe that
night. My success was phenomenal.
Encore after encore, wild applause and
unbounded enthusiasm greeted the
performance, and l woke up next morn.
ing to find myself famous and the pos
SCISSOR of $3.50 net proceeds of my ghosts
handiwOrk.
Just here l will explain a want the
papers complained of-namely, that l
gave out no programme of my perform
ance and the audience had to guess at
what played. Leaving out of view the
fact that the vast majority of audiences
do not know any more about what you
play with programme than they do
without it will say that could not
help it.
Now. am not going to attempt to de-
scribe my six months tour or my won
derful success. If l mentioned the
name under which played you could
yourself write out the history of my en-
gagement. Suffice 1T to say that the
morning after my first concert in New
York Richard Grant White pronounced
me the finest pianist America had ever
heard. and do believe he was right,
only he ought to have written "my
hands" instead of my name.
played steadily on-starring, as they
call it, through half dozen states, and
by the end of next May had invested
$4,000 in United States bonds and had
$4,000 more in the bank. Tommy
lVanS WtS u gorgeous Oh u Stlary OI VlOU
week and had echewed gin, never
drinking any other tipple less expensive
than Roedener'
AT little city in Massachusetts the
first incident of any note occurred, and
1t was the beginning of the end.
About midway in the concert a very
excellent performance of one of Spohr's
symphonies was encored and / at
tempted to repeat it. OF course failed,
and my hands glided into an arrange
ment which / thought at first was the
adante in A fiat in Beethoven's SYM
phony. But ere | had played two bars
found / was mistaken and that it was
one of my "unknowns."
What possessed me to do so I cannot
tell, but whispered to Tommy, "Origi-
nal arrangement: Loves Question:"
and ne shouted it out.
The piece was listened to in the pro-
toundest silence and we'll did it merit
attention. AS say, it commenced like
the andante in A fiat, then it danced off
into kind Of scherzo and then glided
the most pathetic music / have ever
heard. My name was an inspiration.
The whole arrangement was one grand
i. \