further room._)

DOMINIE. But do you not combine the study of musical pieces with the
study of exercises, in order that the cultivation of the taste may go
hand in hand with mechanical improvement?

MR. BUFFALO. My dear friend, you are too narrow-minded there,--you make
a mistake: taste must come of itself, from much playing and with years.
Your Cecilia played the two new waltzes, and the Nocturne of Chopin, and
Beethoven's trio very nicely. But then that was all drilled into her: we
could tell that well enough by hearing it,--Stock and I.

DOMINIE. Did it sound unnatural to you,--mannered? and did you think it
wooden, dry, dull?

MR. BUFFALO. Not exactly that; but the trouble was it sounded _studied_.
The public applauded, it is true; but they don't know any thing. Stock
and I thought--

DOMINIE. Do you not think that the taste for a beautiful interpretation
may be early awakened, without using severity with the pupil? and that
to excite the feeling for music, to a certain degree, even in early
years, is in fact essential? The neglect of this very thing is the
reason that we are obliged to listen to so many players, who really have
mechanically practised themselves to death, and have reduced musical art
to mere machinery,--to an idle trick of the fingers.

MR. BUFFALO. That's all nonsense. I say teach them the scales, to run up
and down the gamut! Gradus ad Parnassum's the thing! Classical,
classical! Yesterday you made your daughter play that Trill-Etude by