Rubinstein then traveled for some years, visiting America in 1872--a tour which brought him $40,000. So popular was his playing that he was afterward offered $125,000 for fifty concerts; but he could not overcome his dread of the sea voyage. He returned to Russia from America, and after a short rest continued his concert tours. For the remaining years of his life he lived in turn at Petrograd, Berlin, and Dresden, devoting his time to concerts, teaching, and to composition. In 1885 he began a series of historical recitals, which he gave in most of the chief European capitals. Rubinstein died near Petrograd on November 20, 1894. PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 4, No. 18, SERIAL No. 118 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC. [Illustration: MODESTE PETROVICH MOUSSORGSKY] _RUSSIAN MUSIC_ _Modeste Petrovich Moussorgsky_ THREE Moussorgsky’s artistic creed might be summed up in one sentence--he was devoted absolutely to the principle of “art for _life’s_ sake.” This is quite the opposite of “Art for art’s sake.” Moussorgsky looked on musical art not as an end in itself, but as a means of vital expression. He was a full-blooded realist, and his music throbs with life. Modeste Petrovich Moussorgsky was born on the estate of his father at Karevo on March 28, 1839. His father was a man of moderate means, and the boy spent his first ten years in the country and in close touch with the peasants. This early environment inspired his later feelings of sympathy with the land and its people. Long before he could play the piano he tried to reproduce songs that he heard among the peasants. His mother was pleased at this, and began to give him lessons on the piano when he was still a young child. At the age of seven he was able to play some of the smaller pieces of Liszt. Sometimes he even improvised musical settings for the fairy tales that his nurse told him. In 1849 Moussorgsky and his brother were taken to Petrograd, where they were entered in the military cadet school, for the boy was intended for the army. At the same time, however, his parents allowed him to pursue his musical education. Moussorgsky’s father died in 1853, and three years later the youth entered his regiment. It was in 1857 that he began to have a distaste for his military duties, and two years later he resigned from the army. During the summer following his resignation, however, he was unable to do any work with his music, as he was taken sick with nervous trouble. Also from the time he left the army he was never free from financial embarrassments.