The Isolation of Music

Extract

I am sure that no one of the party of American visitors to which I have the honour to belong could open his lips on this occasion without first of all trying to express something of our hearty appreciation of the innumerable and overwhelming courtesies that have been heaped upon us ever since we set foot on English soil. It falls to others who can do it more gracefully than I to make the ampler acknowledgments that are due for most of these beautiful attentions. But I cannot begin this paper without tendering to the Council and the members of this famous Association a word of special recognition of the peculiar honour you have done us in asking us not only to be your guests this evening, but to participate formally in your deliberations. It would surely have been enough if you had permitted us to attend simply as listeners. But you have insisted with a cordiality which we cannot doubt that we should do more. And, while the duty is to us a most delicate and difficult one, we could not but accept it, believing that somewhere in the symphonic outburst of hospitable good-will with which we have been greeted, there would be the reassuring strain of kind forbearance for any failure on our part fittingly to discharge the obligation so courteously laid upon us.