A charming photograph of the eleven-year-old Hofmann, shown leaning against the keyboard of a piano - taken the same year he gave his first American tour, and neatly signed by him in the lower white margin.

Hofmann's first American tour was scheduled to include fifty recitals in the span of three months. Shortly after its commencement, though, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children intervened, insisting that the boy's health was too poor to withstand such a demanding agenda. However, the lucrative ten-thousand-dollar contract left him legally bound to complete the tour, so Alfred Corning Clark, philanthropist and heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, donated $50,000 to release Hofmann from the contract and further fund his education in Germany. The generous sum enabled Hofmann to pursue music, mathematics, and science, and undoubtedly contributed to Hofmann's success as a pianist and inventor in the decades that followed.