In George Sand's _Letters of a Traveller_ Chopin also appears, but sadly and hopelessly. What Xavier de Maistre says of the Fornarina and Raphael is the undertone of all the passages of the book that speak of Chopin--"She loved her love more than her lover." Then came the burial at the Madeleine, with his own funeral march beating time to his grave. The mere pianist who had aroused the most enthusiasm in this country was Leopold de Meyer, who came more than twenty years ago. His was a blithe, exhilarating style. There was a grotesque little plaster cast of him in the shop-windows at the time, representing him crouching over the instrument, with enormous hands spread upon the keyboard, and his fat knees crowding in to cover all the rest of the space. It was slam-bang playing, but so skilful, and with such a tickling melody, that it was irresistibly popular. His "Marche Marocaine," a brilliant _tour de force_, was always sure to captivate the audience; and his success was indisputable. De Meyer's concerts were sometimes given in the old Tabernacle in Broadway, near Leonard Street, the circular church which for so many years was the chief public hall in the city. The platform was almost in the centre, and the aisles radiated from it. The galleries went quite around the building, and, except for the huge columns which supported a dome, it was convenient both for hearing and seeing. Here were some of the great antislavery meetings in the hottest days of the agitation. The anniversaries were held here, and it was the scene of all popular lectures and of concerts. A few blocks above, upon Broadway, near Canal Street, was the old Apollo Hall, where the first Philharmonic concerts took place. In those early days of the German music--days which followed the City Hotel epoch and the Garcia opera--people were so unaccustomed to the proprieties of the concert-room that the Easy Chair has even known some persons to whisper and giggle during the performance of the finest symphonies of Beethoven and Mozart, and so excessively rude as to rustle out of the hall before the last piece was ended. Upon one such occasion it said to its neighbor, as they were coming out: "It is a pity such ill-mannered people should thrust themselves among ladies and gentlemen." "Ill-mannered!" quoth its neighbor; "I assure you they are carriage company from the neighborhood of Union Square." In these days of universal respectful attention at the Philharmonic concerts it is but a curious reminiscence of long-passed boorishness, this of persons who whispered and giggled, and rustled out before the end, at concerts, to the disturbance of all mannerly people.