It is difficult to define the charm with which the artists of Poland seem to be imbued almost beyond any other race. It is more than a social gift. It is not the result of calculation but seems to be a combination of kindliness of heart and good breeding. Madame Marcella Sembrich has it to a supreme degree, also Jean and Edouard de Reszke, also Tim and Joe Adamowski, Paul Kochanski, and my old friend Alexander Lambert, and if the new state of Poland were composed only of such of the Polish elect as I have just mentioned it would soon become the ideal republic of the world. On the other hand, a country composed exclusively of musicians might not make a contented population, as it is well known that we need an audience to listen to us, and musicians, rightly or wrongly, have the reputation of never being willing to listen to each other. I do not, however, mean to imply that the Poles are the exclusive possessors of personal charm. For instance, I do not know of any man who has it in greater degree than my old friend Charles Martin Loeffler, who was born in Alsace, received his musical education in France, was violinist in the private orchestra of a Russian grand duke in Nice, and, at the age of sixteen, came to America. My father immediately became very fond of him, and on Sunday afternoons, when we always had chamber-music at home in which my father played first violin and Sam Franko second, Martin Loeffler would play the viola. I liked him immensely and our friendship has lasted through the years. Our birthdays are on the same day, and we are almost of an age, as he is only a year older. When Higginson formed the Boston Orchestra under George Henschel, Loeffler migrated to Boston and became first violin and second concert master. At the same time he continued his studies in composition, and has since become one of our foremost American composers. For years he has lived as a gentleman farmer in Medfield, Massachusetts. His compositions are few and far between, but all of them have the same aristocratic conception, refinement, and original orchestration, such as a man can write who has spent a great part of his life in the orchestra and knows its literature and possibilities. His letters, exquisitely penned, rank with those of Eugene Ysaye, and that is high praise, as Ysaye is the very prince of letter-writers. I venture to insert one of Loeffler’s here because it treats of the first performance of my opera, “Cyrano,” and because it is so whole-hearted in its praise and so gentle but discerning in its criticisms of the weak spots in my work. Medfield, Mass. Sunday, 26 March, 1913. Dear Walter: