A very different, though equally ingenuous tribute to my powers was that given by an old Indian trapper who, when in Chicago to sell his hides, went to hear me sing and expressed his emotions to a newspaper man of that city in approximately the following language: I have heard most of the sweet and terrible noises that natives make. I have heard the thunder among the Hills when the Lord was knocking against the earth until it passed; and I have heard the wind in the pines and the waves on the beaches, when the darkness of night was in the woods, and nature was singing her Evening Song and there was no bird nor beast the Lord has made, and I have not heard a voice that would make as sweet a noise as nature makes when the Spirit of the Universe speaks through the stillness; but that sweet lady has made sounds to-night sweeter than my ears have heard on hill or lake shore at noon, or in the night season, and I certainly believe that the Spirit of the Lord has been with her and given her the power to make such sweet sounds. A man might like to have these sweet sounds in his ears when his body lies in his cabin and his spirit is standing on the edge of the great clearing. I wish she could sing for me when my eyes grow dim and my feet strike the trail that no man strikes but once, nor travels both ways. Surely among my friends, if not among my "sincere admirers," I may include Okakura, who came over here with the late John La Farge as an envoy from the Japanese Government to study the art of this country as well as that of Europe. His dream was to found some sort of institution in Japan for the preservation and development of his country's old, national ideals in art. His criticisms of Raphael and Titian, by the way, were something extraordinary. As for music, he had a marvellous sense for it. La Farge took him to a Thomas Concert and he was vastly impressed by the music of Beethoven. One might have thought that he had listened to Occidental classics all his life. But, for that matter, I know two little Japanese airs that Davidson of London told me might well have been written by Beethoven himself; so it may be that there is an obscure bond of sympathy, which our less acute ears would not always recognise, between our great master and the composers of Okakura's native land.