of gratitude due his teacher. He and Friedheim undertook to win the favor of the German musicians for Liszt's greater orchestral works, As a preliminary thereto they gave in Weimar a performance on two pianos, entirely from memory, of his Dante and Faust Symphonic Poems. Later, they repeated the same at the old Gewandhaus in Leipsic. In response to their efforts some staunch adherents of Liszt organized in the winter of 188586 the now large and powerful Liszt Society, with headquarters at Leipsic and with the protecting name of Grand Duke Carl Alexander of Saxe-Weimar. The object of the union is to produce in several concerts each winter season not only the less known orchestral compositions of Liszt, but also "the neglected or totally unknown creations of other writers, modern and classic." This gives the society a more liberal tone, and is in direct emulation of the practices and teachings of Liszt himself. The latter was, naturally, unspeakably gratified with the formation of this great musical body bearing his name. Its existence brightened the last few months of his life, and its success was the object of his dearest hope and solicitude. Siloti is not only a great virtuoso; he is a thorough artist and musician as well. He has a large, beautiful, sympathetic tone, with great breadth and nobility of style. At his Berlin début in 1884 he made a splendid impression upon public and press. He was then just nineteen years of age. His performance of Scarlatti's "E minor Pastorale was one of the most exquisite bits of tone-production conceivable. In contrast, he gave Chopin's spirited "A major Polonaise" with a reckless dash and phenomenal strength in which only Rubinstein and Friedheim can compete. His interpretation of Liszt's "Pester Carneval" is the climax of bravura playing. Personally, he was dear to the master and almost like a son. At a large musicale in Berlin one evening in February, 1885, I first met Adèle aus der Ohe. Upon reminding her that I had made her acquaintance in America several years previously, she exclaimed in surprise: "How is that possible? I have never been there."

"Through Miss Fay's book," I replied. "Ah!" she said, and smiled. "Then you made my acquaintance at an early age. I hope though to go to America some day." That wish was to be fulfilled earlier than she then thought. Unheralded and comparatively unknown Fräulein Aus der Ohe landed in New York in October, 1886. Her brilliant success in the metropolis and the principal cities of the Union is too recent to need recapitulation. Aus der Ohe is the name of a very old and noble German family, dating from the eleventh or twelfth century, when various prefixes

i. e., von, au, zu, aus, etc.- denoted high birth. Many families afterward altered the original form to the more common von; but the Ohes have retained the ancient aus before their patronymic. The pianiste is a daughter of the late Professor Aus der Ohe, of the Royal Artillery and Engineers' School at Berlin, but formerly of Hanover, where she was born and passed the first five or six years of her life. When three and a half years old she first gave evidence of her remarkable talent. An elder sister was strumming Arditi's "Il bacio" one day in the nursery where the children were at play. When she had finished, the tiny Adèle, crying, "Ich! Ich!" begged to be placed on the stool, and to their astonishment repeated the entire waltz, giving the correct bass with her left hand. "Mamma! Papa!" cried the children in chorus as they threw open the door: "Come! Come and hear Adèlchen!" There was great rejoicing that day in the family Ohe. The parents themselves began at once to instruct her in piano-playing. In her fifth year she became acquainted with the talented musical couple Bronsart, who took her to Hans von Bülow for advice. "Let me first look in her eyes," he said; and continued, "Yes, there really is music there!" He proposed that she be placed under his instruction at Munich where he was then residing, but the fond parents could not consent to a separation from so young a child. Adèle was seven years old when Professor Aus der Ohe moved with his family to Berlin. Here she became a pupil of Franz Kullak, and several months later of his father, the celebrated Dr. Theodore Kullak,

with whom she remained until her thirteenth year. At eight years of age she made her first public appearance. Two years later she gave concerts with orchestra at Berlin and Hanover in which she played Beethoven's" B flat major Concerto" with the Moscheles "Cadenza." Shortly after leaving Kullak she came to Liszt at Weimar and, barring occasional interruptions, benefited by seven years of his instruction. Several long concert tours-the first when in her fourteenth year- were made during this period in Germany. Previous to her American début she had never played outside her native land. At her last public appearance there she performed Taubert's "Piano Con

certo " in the four hundredth Jubilee Soirée of the Royal Orchestra, with that superb body of musicians, at the Berlin Royal Opera House. In the salons of the German capital Adèle aus der Ohe is as great a social as musical favorite. She enjoyed the friendship and chaperonage of the late lamented Princess Alma of Carolath-Beuthin, a noble woman, distinguished for her charities and as a patroness of the fine arts. She is very popular at the Imperial Palace, where she has often played privately and in state concerts. Adèle aus der Ohe is not merely a gifted musical artiste, but a young woman of varied accomplishments. Besides her mother-tongue, she speaks and

writes French, Italian, and English; is a student in the arts and sciences; writes poetry, and is a composer of music- under an assumed name. She has been rightly taught to believe in the necessity of a broad and liberal education for all who aspire above mediocrity in her chosen profession. After hearing her play and meeting her almost daily in Weimar, I comprehended Liszt's deferential bearing towards her which had struck me the first time I saw her at his lessons. As he honored the true gentlewoman, just so did he admire her intellectual and artistic gifts. Although Liszt was ever willing and ready to aid young pianists from the wealth of his knowledge, he was exceedingly discriminating and gave in plenty only to those who evinced uncommon aptitude. The earnestness of his work with Adèle aus der Ohe was the most telling compliment he could pay the mental endowments of any pupil. She was by all odds the best among the ladies, and one of the most accomplished artists in his class. He habitually commented upon her improvisations introductory to a piano composition, and frequently bade her extricate some frightened player from the dangers of an impromptu prelude. At his especial request she compiled a volume of such preludes and modulations, which he desired

her to dedicate to him. This Fräulein Aus der Ohe did-though it has not yet been published—and sent Liszt a copy of the same. It gave him much pleasure, as I can substantiate. In the lessons he frequently remarked her "intrepidity" and "fearless certainty" in playing; and in one of the last soirées musicâles that he gave, said in an aside, “She has a wonderful touch; it is like velvet!" Perhaps I heard him express himself more in approval of Adèle aus der Ohe's performances than of any others; for she had been absent from Weimar some time when she returned in 1885, and her splendid artistic development was a source of gratification to him. In his letters to her, Liszt varied the conventional form of address to "My honored colleague," "My dear virtuoso," etc. Her public life is so arduous that Fräulein Aus der Öhe finds little time for society. Her personal tastes are quiet and unassuming. Once I heard her retort rather warmly to a complimentary remark of a friend: "I have no time to be vain and conceited. My art is holy to me and requires my every effort. If there is anything that I dislike, it is an arrogant artist. He should be thankful to God that he has given him such a talent, and guard it sacredly." Such sentiments add dignity to the character of a great artiste like Adèle aus der Ohe. Albert Morris Bagby.

the wood, abreast of the lugger. His canoe slowly turned and pointed towards her, and then stood still. He sat there with his paddle in the water, longing like a dumb brute; longing, and, without a motion, struggling for courage enough to move forward. It would not come. His heart jarred his frame with its beating. He could not stir.

As he looked out upon the sky a soft, faint tremor of light glimmered for a moment over it without disturbing a shadow below. The paddle stirred gently, and the canoe slowly drew back; the storm was coming to betray him with its lightnings. In the black forest's edge the pot-hunter lingered trembling. Oh for the nerve to take a brave man's chances! A little courage would have saved his life. He wiped the dew from his brow with his sleeve; every nerve had let go. Again there came across the water the very words of those who talked together on the steamer. They were saying that the felling of trees would begin in the morning; but they spoke in a tongue which Acadians of late years had learned to understand, though many hated it, but of which he had never known twenty words, and what he had known were now forgotten-the English tongue. Even without courage, to have known a little English would have made the difference between life and death. Another glimmer spread dimly across the sky, and a faint murmur of far-off thunder came to the ear. He turned the pirogue and fled.

Soon the stars are hidden. A light breeze seems rather to tremble and hang poised than to blow. The rolling clouds, the dark wilderness, and the watery waste shine out every moment in the wide gleam of lightnings still hidden by the wood, and are wrapped again in ever-thickening darkness over which thunders roll and jar and answer one another across the sky. Then, like a charge of ten thousand lancers, come the wind and the rain, their onset covered by all the artillery of heaven. The lightnings leap, hiss, and blaze; the thunders crack and roar; the rain lashes; the waters writhe; the wind smites and howls. For five, for ten, for twenty minutes-for an hour, for two hours-the sky and the flood are never for an instant wholly dark, or the thunder for one moment silent; but while the universal roar sinks and swells, and the wide, vibrant illumination shows all things in ghostly half concealment, fresh floods of lightning every moment rend the dim curtain and leap forth; the glare of day falls upon the swaying wood, the reeling, bowing, tossing willows, the seething waters, the whirling rain, and in the midst the small form of the distressed steamer, her revolving paddle-wheels toiling behind to lighten the strain upon her anchor chains; then all

VOL. XXXV. — 100.

are dim ghosts again, while a peal, as if the heavens were rent, rolls off around the sky, comes back in shocks and throbs, and sinks in a long roar that before it can die is swallowed up in the next flash and peal.

The deserted lugger is riding out the tornado. Whirled one moment this way and another that, now and again taking in water, her forest-shelter breaks the force of many a gust that would have destroyed her out in the open. But in the height of the storm her poor substitute for an anchor lets go its defective hold on the rushy bottom and drags, and the little vessel backs, backs, into the willows. She escapes such entanglement as would capsize her, and by and by, when the wind lulls for a moment and then comes with all its wrath from the opposite direction, she swings clear again and drags back nearly to her first mooring and lies there, swinging, tossing, and surviving still, a den of snakes.

The tempest was still fierce, though abating, and the lightning still flashed, but less constantly, when at a point near the lugger the pirogue came out of the forest, laboring against the wind and half-filled with water. On the face of the storm-beaten man in it each gleam of the lightning showed the pallid confession of mortal terror. Where that frail shell had been, or how often it had cast its occupant out, no one can ever know. He was bareheaded and barefooted. One cannot swim in boots; without them, even one who has never dared learn how may hope to swim a little.

In the darkness he drew alongside the lugger, rose, balanced skillfully, seized his moment, and stepped safely across her gunwale. Aslight lurch caused him to throw his arms out to regain his poise; the line by which he still held the canoe straightened out its length and slipped from his grasp. In an instant the pirogue was gone. A glimmer of lightning showed her driving off sidewise before the wind. But it revealed another sight also. It was dark again, black; but the outcast stood freezing with horror and fright, gazing just in advance of his feet and waiting for the next gleam. It came, brighter than the last; and scarcely a step before him he saw three great serpents moving towards the spot that gave him already such slender footing. He recoiled a step-another; but instantly as he made the second a cold, living form was under his foot, its folds flew round his ankle, and once! twice! it struck! With a frantic effort he spurned it from him; all in the same instant a blaze of lightning discovered the maimed form and black and red markings of a "bastard hornsnake," and with one piercing wail of despair,