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ALICE LAUDER.
21

After this little concert it may be supposed that Miss Lauder was not allowed to hide her talent under a bushel. But she showed herself a true artist as far as caprice went. Sometimes she would refuse to play, however humbly entreated; at others she seemed to be possessed by a spirit of music, and every able-bodied inhabitant of the vessel, as far as duty permitted, would gather round the piano and listen like a three-years’ child to her wild Bohemian waltzes and heartbreaking Scandinavian laments. Even the stewards would come to the top of the stairs and listen, and the second-class passengers looked wistfully forward from their appointed limit. And the artist was by no means insensible to her audience. She would often turn aside from all the solemnities of Handel or Beethoven to play some wailing negro melody which she knew the sailors loved, or “The Auld House at Hame,” which always made the captain feel weepy; or even “Home, Sweet Home,” with variations, for Mrs. Wigs, who listened to the variations with a reverence which Rubinstein himself would not have inspired.

Arthur Campbell was a most regular attendant at these recitations, listening to—one might almost say imbibing—every note, but never speaking to the musician; till one morning he