" The Professor was so much pleased with Mrs. Thaxter's frank
enthusiasm, that he dedicated a sonata he was composing to her, which
was performed the following winter in Boston, and greatly praised also
by the critics.
Piano recitals and concertos thus became the fashion at Appledore, and
classical music was in good demand. Its refining and quieting influence
on the little community was quite perceptible. It produced a change like
the transition from flamboyant Gothic architecture to the pure Grecian
style. At first only a few came to hear it: then the parlor was filled.
The piazza became crowded, and finally gentlemen were obliged to find
places on the rocks outside.
It is one thing to hear music in a crowded concert-room with gas-light
and bad air just after we have left the jarring discords of the street;
and quite a different affair to listen to it with congenial spirits in
the summer air of these islands, which seems to have been made for
attuning the senses to fine perceptions. To enjoy any kind of art, the
mind needs to be like a clean slate on which every mark tells.
In 1881 Professor Paine improved his good reputation both here and in
Europe by composing what is called his Greek music; that is, an overture
to the play of "Oedipus Tyrannus," which was acted at Harvard in the
spring of that year. Of course his seashore friends wished to hear him
play it himself, and after the applause which followed had subsided, he
said: "A little approbation is all the reward I get for my compositions.
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