A bitter December evening found me tumbling through snow and ice to accommodate a certain lyceum in one of our Northwestern cities.  Cold winds from over the Lakes made me wish that the Modern Athens had kept its lecture-system at home; for it has always seemed to me, that, wherever this has gone, her eastern storms have gone with it.  Such ugly thoughts were shamed, however, by the beaming welcome which shone from the face of the kindest of landladies, and at length completely thawed out of me by the glowing fire to which she introduced me, and which animated the coziest of rooms.  Why has not some poet celebrated the experience of thawing?  How deliciously each fibre of the thawee responds to the informing ray, evolving its own sweet sensation of release until all unite in a soft choral reverie!  Carried thus, in a few moments, from the Arctic to the Tropic, I thought, as dear Heine says, my “sweet nothing-at-all thoughts,” until a subtile breath of music won me back to life.

Heavens! what is that?  A strain, strong and tender, pressed its way into the room, soothed my temples, then broke over me in a shower of pearls.  Confused, I started up; and it was some moments before I understood that the music proceeded from the room adjoining mine in the hotel.  Not altogether unfamiliar was the theme; the priestess of whom I have spoken had once brought it from the Holy of Holies, when she was appointed to stand; and now, remembering, I broke out with the word, “Florestan!”

As I uttered it, the music ceased with the dreary fall of an octave.  Whether the musician had heard the exclamation, or whether such a terrible termination was in the music, I knew not:  the latter was quite probable, for, alas! such fearful Icarus-falls are not rare in poor Schumann’s music.  However, I did not consider long, but, rising quickly, passed into the hall, and knocked gently at the door of the next room.

“Enter,” replied a voice, eagerly, but softly.

Enter I did, and stood before a man of about forty winters.  His face was so swart that I could see only the German in the blue eye, and at once imagined that a stream of Plutonic fire had streamed into his veins from some more Oriental race.  I stammered out an apology for my intrusion, but told him how irresistible were such subtile threads as Schumann’s “Carnival” had projected through the walls which separated our rooms.

“Florestan,” I said, “was too much for me.”

Then his eye lighted up as might that of some Arctic voyager, which, having for bleak months rested only on the glittering scales of the ice-dragon coiled about him, is suddenly filled with the warm spread of the Polar Sea.  Taking my hand, he said,—­

“In me, wanderer that I am,—­in me, with the Heimweh in my heart never to be stilled but in that home where Schumann has already gone,—­you see Florestan.”

“Louis Boehner!”

Filled with wonder, and scarcely knowing what I did, I took a little piece of paper which he unwrapped from many folds and placed in my hand.  On it these words were written:—­