"You are too old," the teacher said.

But Thyrsis answered, "I will work as no one ever worked before."

"We all do that," replied the other, with a smile. And so they
began.

And so all day long, with fingers raw, and arms and back shuddering
with exhaustion, Thyrsis sat and practiced, the spirit of Music
beckoning him on. It was in a boarding-house, and there was a
nervous old man in the next room, and in the end Thyrsis had to
move. By the time he went away to the country, he was able to play a
melody in tune; and then he would take some one that had fascinated
him, and practice it and practice it night and day. He would take
his fiddle every morning at eight and stride out into the forest,
and there he would stay all day with the squirrels. They told him
once how a new arrival, driving over in the hotel 'bus at early
dawn, had passed an old Italian woman toiling up a hill and singing
for dear life the "Tannhauser March." It chanced that the new
arrival was a musician, and he leaned out and asked the old woman
where she had learned it. And this was her explanation;

"Dey ees a crazy feller in de woods--he play it all day for tree
weeks!"

Section 14. By this time Thyrsis had finished at college, passing
comfortably near the bottom of his class, and had betaken himself to
a university as a graduate student. He was duly registered for a lot
of courses, and spent his time when he should have been at the
lectures, sitting in a vacant class-room reading the book that had