Excerpt from My Musical Recollections Some years ago, at a banquet of musicians, at which the wine was excellent and the music (with the exception of that which I contributed myself) execrable, I was called upon to make a speech. Having on several previous occasions intensified the melancholy of an after-dinner company in this fashion, I could not very well plead that I was 'unaccustomed to public speaking,' but I sought to be excused on the ground that, as I had enhanced the enjoyment of the assembly by playing one of my own compositions on the piano, it would be a pity to spoil the good impression thus created by taking also a share in the post-prandial oratory. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.