Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

MY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
On a grand piano, which occupied the entire length
of the wall between door and window, several kinds
of outdoor caps lay ready for use; and his Excel-
lency's gloves, varying in texture and thickness, were
placed in the greatest order beside the caps. On the
wall opposite the piano all Henselt's outdoor wraps
were hanging, and in the pocket of whichever he was
going to wear there would be a pocket-handkerchief,
which his housekeeper had placed there, having first
scented it with eau-de-Cologne. She herself showed
me all these details during one of the occasions when
her master was absent from St. Petersburg, on a
journey of inspection which his official duties as
inspector-general obHged him to take through Eussia.
Leaving the ante-room, one entered the master's
sanctum, where he worked, wrote, and Hved, but in
which he very seldom gave a lesson. Two grand
Becker pianofortes stood side by side, near the
windows. There was a cosy fireplace, an armchair,
with side-rests for lamp and books ; and on the
walls hung the portraits of various friends in very
different walks of hfe, which by the style in which
they were done, and the frames in which they were
enclosed, all gave me the idea of ' long, long ago.'
Indeed, the first impression one felt as one entered
the rooms, was that everything there, and the very
way that everything was arranged, was just what one
would have found there more than half a centuiy ago.
Chairs, pictures, mirrors, and their mouldings, all