Realizing, however, that a pianist's income must be rather precarious, I
decided to teach. In those youthful days I had the idea that the teacher
of the piano had an easy life. I remembered one of my professors, a man
of considerable reputation, who took the duties of his profession very
lightly. His method of giving a lesson was to place the music upon the
piano, start the pupil going, then retire to a comfortable couch, light
his pipe and smoke at ease, troubling himself little about the pupil's
doings, except occasionally to call out 'Falsch!'

"So I, too, began to teach the piano. But I soon discovered that
teaching was something quite different from what I had imagined it to
be, and that it was something I knew very little about. I now set myself
to learn how to teach--how to help those pupils who came to me.

"One of my first discoveries was that most of the pupils were afflicted
with stiff wrists and arms, and that this stiffness must be remedied. My
own playing had always been free, due to one of my early teachers having
thoroughly inculcated the principle of 'weight,' so often acclaimed in
these days as a modern discovery. But how to bring about this condition
in others was a great problem. I studied the Mason method, and found
many helpful, illuminating ideas in regard to relaxation and
devitalization. I had some lessons with S.B. Mills, and later did
considerable valuable work with Paolo Gallico, who opened up to me the
great storehouse of musical treasure, and revealed to me among other
things the spiritual technic of the pianist's art. Subsequently I
investigated the Virgil and Leschetizky methods. Mr. Virgil has done
some remarkable things in the way of organizing and systematizing
technical requirements, and for this we owe him much. Such analyses had
not before been made with anything like the care and minuteness, and his
work has been of the greatest benefit to the profession. My subsequent