Rachmaninoff has conducted himself with great outward civility towards the American public, and this is the very quality that has prevented them from seeing through his mildly insulting arrogance. When after a thunderous ovation they begged him to play some more, he said that he thought an appropriate work to play on an occasion such as this was an Italian polka he had noted down from a mechanical organ. And play it he did, to give him credit, brilliantly. When the audience, not perceiving that the occasion really demanded something rather more substantial, burst into a renewed frenzy of applause, Rachmaninoff got up and said, in English, 'That's all,' at which everyone sat down again.