But as for the rest! Alas, all those who do not understand me, or who
choose to misunderstand me, those are the worst!--especially the
ill-natured people, the _classical_ people who bray about music, stride
straight to the notes, and have no patience till they come to Beethoven;
who foolishly prate and fume about my unclassical management, but at
bottom only wish to conceal their own unskilfulness, their want of
culture and of disinterestedness, or to excuse their habitual drudgery.
Lazy people without talent I cannot undertake to inspirit, to teach,
and to cultivate.

This chapter will, almost by itself, point out to unprejudiced minds my
method of giving more advanced instruction, and will show in what spirit
I have educated my own daughters, even to the highest point of musical
culture, without using the slightest severity. It will, indeed, cause
great vexation to the ill-minded and even to the polite world, who
attribute the musical position of my daughters in the artistic world to
a tyranny used by me, to immoderate and unheard-of "practising," and to
tortures of every kind; and who do not hesitate to invent and
industriously to circulate the most absurd reports about it, instead of
inquiring into what I have already published about teaching, and
comparing it with the management which, with their own children, has led
only to senseless thrumming.




CHAPTER II.

AN EVENING ENTERTAINMENT AT HERR ZACH'S.