Tribute

High up in a Manhattan hotel a tired, grizzly man lay sick. It was Ignace Jan Paderewski, 65 years old, exhausted after a season of 70 concerts before some 250,000 people; too tired to play again this season; too sick to attend a testimonial dinner planned for him by the American Legion, to whose $5,000,000 endowment he had contributed $28,500, the proceeds of four concerts.

"Friends are here," Mme. Paderewski told him one afternoon last week, straightened his pillows, helped him into a faded, favorite bathrobe, and opened the door for a delegation of the American Legion, headed by National Commander John R. McQuigg. They had come to pin on him a Distinguished Service Medal suspended by a ribbon from a gold crossbar containing 74 diamonds.

It read: "To Ignace Jan Paderewski, artist, patriot and humanitarian, with the highest esteem of the American Legion, New York, May 10, 1926."

They pinned it on the faded bathrobe and waited for him to say something, waited several minutes before the tired, grizzly man, tears in his eyes, could thank them, protest that he had done "nothing to deserve this unusual distinction."