school. But now in poetry and other books he met with references to
composers, and to the meaning of great music; and the things that
were described there were the things he loved, and he began to feel
a great eagerness to get at them. As a first step he bought a
mandolin, and set to work to teach himself to play, a task at which
he wrought with great diligence. At the same time a friend had
bought a guitar, and the two set to work to play duets. The first
preliminary was the getting of the instruments in tune; and not
knowing that the mandolin is an octave higher than the guitar, they
spent a great deal of time and broke a great many guitar-strings.

As the next step, Thyrsis went to hear a great pianist, and sat
perplexed and wondering. There was a girl next to him who sobbed,
and Thyrsis watched her as he might have watched a house on fire.
Only once the pianist pleased _him_--when he played a pretty little
piece called somebody's "impromptu", in which he got a gleam of a
"tune." Poor Thyrsis went and got that piece, and took it home to
study it, with the help of the mandolin; but, alas, in the maze of
notes he could not even find the "tune."

But if he could not understand the music, he could read books about
it; he read a whole library--criticism of music, analysis of music,
histories of music, composers of music; and so gradually he learned
the difference between a sarabande and a symphony, and began to get
some idea of what he went out for to hear. At first, at the
concerts, all he could think of was to crane his neck and recognize
the different instruments; he heard whole symphonies, while doing
nothing but watching for the "movements," and making sure he hadn't
skipped any. One heartless composer ran two movements into one, and
so Thyrsis' concert came out one piece short at the end, and he sat