makes the piano a sympathetic, singing instrument, quite a different
thing from the source of hard or blurred sounds it so generally is. I
think this was due not entirely to natural artistic temperament,
but largely to the fact that I did not begin to learn the piano by
counting out exercises, but by trying to reproduce the quaint songs
which my mother used to sing, with all their pathetic turns and
cadences.

Even at a tender age, in playing I helped to express what I felt
by some of the mannerisms which I afterwards observed in great
performers; I had not copied them. I have often heard people speak of
the mannerisms of musicians as affectations adopted for mere effect;
in some cases they may be so; but a true artist can no more play upon
the piano or violin without putting his whole body in accord with the
emotions he is striving to express than a swallow can fly without
being graceful. Often when playing I could not keep the tears which
formed in my eyes from rolling down my cheeks. Sometimes at the end
or even in the midst of a composition, as big a boy as I was, I would
jump from the piano, and throw myself sobbing into my mother's arms.
She, by her caresses and often her tears, only encouraged these fits
of sentimental hysteria. Of course, to counteract this tendency to
temperamental excesses I should have been out playing ball or in
swimming with other boys of my age; but my mother didn't know that.
There was only once when she was really firm with me, making me do
what she considered was best; I did not want to return to school after
the unpleasant episode which I have related, and she was inflexible.

I began my third term, and the days ran along as I have already
indicated. I had been promoted twice, and had managed each time to
pull "Red" along with me. I think the teachers came to consider me