“With Ellie 3 ½ p.m. at one of Edmund Schermerhorn’s fortnightly musical sessions. Some thirty or forty lovers of music for its own sake present. This is decidedly among the best & most refreshing social movements made in New York for years. It’s a protest against the extravagance & vulgar ostentation of wealth characteristic of the set of which Belmont is a specimen, and of the other set to which so many of our dinner-giving merchants & bankers belong. Edmund is just the man to set this example, being immensely rich & in the first rank of social & family dignity.

We had Schumann’s quintette, op. 44, decidedly the strongest thing of Schumann’s I ever heard—Spohr’s quartette, op. 43 & Beethoven’s piano & violin concerto [sonata] (op. 47) with the exquisite well known Andante & variations & the brilliant final Presto.”