teacher, and leaves much to the individuality of his pupils. He first
heard me play at the Imperial Music School in Odessa, and took me to
Petrograd to study with him, which I did for a year and four months. And
he could accomplish wonders! That one year he had a little group of four
pupils each one better than the other--a very stimulating situation for
all of them. There was a magnetism about him: he literally hypnotized
his pupils into doing better than their best--though in some cases it
was evident that once the support of his magnetic personality was
withdrawn, the pupil fell back into the level from which he had been
raised for the time being.

"Yet Auer respected the fact that temperamentally I was not responsive
to this form of appeal. He gave me of his best. I never practiced more
than two or three hours a day--just enough to keep fresh. Often I came
to my lesson unprepared, and he would have me play things--sonatas,
concertos--which I had not touched for a year or more. He was a severe
critic, but always a just one.

"I can recall how proud I was when he sent me to beautiful music-loving
Helsingfors, in Finland--where all seems to be bloodshed and confusion
now--to play a recital in his own stead on one occasion, and how proud
he was of my success. Yet Auer had his little peculiarities. I have read
somewhere that the great fencing-masters of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries were very jealous of the secrets of their famous
feints and _ripostes_, and only confided them to favorite pupils who
promised not to reveal them. Auer had his little secrets, too, with
which he was loth to part. When I was to make my _début_ in Berlin, I
remember, he was naturally enough interested--since I was his pupil--in
my scoring a triumph. And he decided to part with some of his treasured
technical thrusts and parries. And when I was going over the