vivisection, and one day missed an important train because he stopped
to scold a peasant woman who was taking to the market a basket of live
fish in the agony of suffocation. I hardly know of a great composer
who, in his heart of hearts, was not gentle and generous. Bach,
Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Gluck, Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann,
Mendelssohn, Weber, Liszt, and a dozen others who might be named,
though not without their faults, were kind and honest men, living
arguments for the ennobling effects of music.

In no other profession can men and women be found so ready to aid a
colleague in distress. Take the case of poor Robert Franz, for
instance, who lost his hearing through the whistle of a locomotive,
and thereby lost his professional income, and was brought to the verge
of starvation because his stupid contemporaries (I mean ourselves)
refused to buy his divine songs. Hardly had his misfortune become
known when Liszt, Joachim, and Frau Magnus arranged a concert tour for
his benefit which netted $23,000, and insured him comfort for the rest
of his life.

And in general, let me ask, why is it that, whenever a charitable
project is organized, musicians are invariably called upon first to
give their services? Does not this amount to an eloquent and universal
presumption that musical people are generous and kind-hearted?

Nor is this the only kind of presumption indicating that music
commonly goes hand in hand with kindness. The English in the days of
Elizabeth, as Chappell tells us, "had music at dinner, music at
supper, music at weddings, music at funerals, music at night, music at
dawn, music at work, music at play. He who felt not, in some degree,
its soothing influence, was viewed as a morose unmusical being, whose