intended to give specimens of modulations
from every known key into every other.
This, on the doctrine of permutation,
involved a vast amount of paper and notes,
and he had only ventured on what he called
"mon premier cahier." I confess I was
delighted with this specimen of harmony;
for there was in my abandoned nature this
redeeming point, an intense love of music,
and of harmonies and modulations. Here
was a new realm; and while he showed,
with skilful touch, how to pass from
the key of A minor into C, by some
skilful but exquisite transitions, I would
steal up and listen, rapt. (We had
subscribed for two copies of the work, and I
am looking at them now.) He had never
noticed me, as being quite out of his world,
as it might be a stringless and bridgeless
violin; but one day when he came, as
usual very warm, and found me, all
unconscious, sitting at the piano, with his
Harmonies Pratiques open before me, and
striving desperately to work from A minor
into C, he entered softly, and, it may be,
recognising a blending chord, called out, " C
sharp, boy!" He thrust one large hand over
mine, and crashed down the right notes.
"What do your know?" he said; "have
you learned? Surely that Simpson—-"

"No," I said; "but O, sir, this is so
beautiful!"

After that, though he did not like
strangers in the room, he would often say,
"Let him stay."

I see him now, sitting at one side— the
juvenile player he was instructing with her
face anxiously put close to the music, the
small hands jerking spasmodically,
grasshopper-like—his round figure, in a snuff-
brown coat (and some cheap Order too),
stooped inwards, while his pencil pointed
laboriously, and head emphasised his
movements. Of a sudden he had unconsciously
pushed himself into the place, and had
played it off in a bold rattling style. With
Miss Simpson he was not at all popular, for
to her he was blunt and gruff in his manner,
being sure, if any one came in with a
message to her, to turn round and call out
sharply, " Do keep silence, please! How
can I teach if that is to go on?"

"Really so ungentlemanlike in his tone,"
Miss Simpson would protest. " I don't know
where he can have been brought up."

This feeling, too, was owing to another
reason; for at an early period of his tuition
he had said despotically, " Tell me who is
to look after these children and see that
they practise all that I shall drill them in?"

"0, Miss Simpson, of course—she plays
very nicely herself."

"What does she play? Then here,
mademoiselle, sit down— let us have your cheval
de bataille, please."

Miss Simpson shrank away. She had a
horse of battle, Through the Wood, a
popular air of her day, much sung at
Exeter, her natal town, and arranged with
variations—six I believe— by the ingenious
Hertz. " O, really, sir!" she began.

"Just as you please," he said, turning
away; " it was for the interest of the pupils
I asked."

Scandalised authority had now to
intervene: " Miss Simpson, I must request
you will be kind enough to let M. Weimar
hear you."

She went to the instrument. It was a
fine piece, no doubt, Introduction Maestoso,
with sixteen pages to follow. She had barely
struck the first two solemn chords, and had
launched into the little gallopade up the
piano, which always follows, when he
quietly turned away:

"That will do," he said. " Thank you—
quite enough. I see perfectly. So you
waste your time on that stuff? Now if I
teach mademoiselle, and am to make a
player of her, I must lay down this fixed
rule: that no one interferes or touches
the piano when I am absent, by way of
example. Does madame agree? ' Of course
madame had to agree, impressed with this
sort of Abernethy plainness. " After all,
you know he had the interests of the child
at stake." Miss Simpson never forgave.

So he came and laboured, often staying
three quarters beyond his stipulated hour,
labouring, grinding, scolding, at times with
a severity that brought tears to eyes;
forcing those small fingers through the
heavy loam of the great John Field's
Concerto in B, still surly, still reeking of
the cherry-brandy, until at last he had
performed his promise, and made a player of his
pupil. He must be long since gathered
into the Havre earth, for he was then
elderly; and I dare say it troubled his last
moments to think he had not got beyond the
opening number of his grand work, the
Harmonies Pratiques.