“But I have to practice for my next concert. And nighttime is the only time I have free!” “Yes, but Mr. Paderewski, we have so many elderly people living in the hotel. We can’t possibly have you practicing the piano at midnight. You can understand that!” He could understand it, yes, but what could he do about it? Suddenly from the depth of his memory came a clear picture of the Kerntopf factory in Warsaw, with its room after room of inviting pianos. He grabbed his coat and called to his secretary, “Goerlitz! Come on! We’re going out!” “Going out? At this hour? Where to?” “To the Steinway warehouse!” The nightwatchman at the Fourteenth Street office was surprised to be roused from his slumbers by a wild-eyed man pounding at the door. “I must have presented a strange appearance,” Paderewski recalled. “The watchman, however, opened the room where the pianos were stored, and there, in that cold and gloomy loft, I began practicing. There were no lights except the two candles on the piano. It must have been a strange sight as I think back on it—the empty room, with two fluttering candles and the two men, the night watchman and my secretary, each snoring loudly in his corner as I worked on until morning. That was all I had for inspiration!” Yet in spite of his fatigue, this concert was a greater success than the first one. The reviews of the debut had been of the sort usually described as “mixed.” But after the second concert the _New York Times_ headlined its account with the flat statement, “The Success of Ignace Jan Paderewski is Assured.” His success might be assured, but poor Ignace Jan Paderewski himself was in sad shape as he doggedly returned to the Steinway warehouse to practice the arm-wrenching Rubinstein Concerto. How long, he wondered, could he go on at his present pace? No wonder Rubinstein himself had made only one American tour in his life and had said, when begged to return, “May Heaven preserve us from such slavery!” The third concert, a matinee for which he had practiced a total of seventeen hours, was an unqualified triumph, “the real beginning of my career in America.” It was not only the critics who were ecstatic. So was Mr. Tretbar. Three thousand dollars, an unheard-of amount of money for a single concert, was taken in at the box office. By the end of the season, Paderewski’s appearance in the same hall would bring in nearly twice that amount. Mr. Steinway himself, although pleased by the box office receipts, did not really care whether he made money out of these concerts. The Steinway firm had thought of the Paderewski tour as a means of advertising its pianos. And what an inspiration the idea turned out to be! In the mind of the public the name “Steinway” became inextricably linked with the name “Paderewski,” and the latter was about to move into the household-word category.