Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

148 MY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
the player was doing something masterly and wonder-
ful ;
she felt at length that the apparent mastery was
mastery on a comparatively low plane ; it was, in
fact, not on the plane of true art at all, but on that
of a gigantic dilettantism, while Henselt's method
was leading me on, slowly, perhaps, but none the less
surely, towards the true heights of art. Whether I
should be able to climb very high, or indeed to climb
at all, was not the question for me ; I had rather be
on the lowest step of Art's ladder, than on the highest
pinnacle of dilettantism.
But I have anticipated my narrative, and I must
return once more to Herr Deppe— just to observe
that he is, to my thinking, one of the most sagacious
beings I have ever come across. He tells his pupils
to ' live a child's life,' and keep much in the open air;
to wear no gloves, not to go to many concerts, and
(most of all characteristic of the man) not to associate
with people who are either not worth being listened
to themselves, or do not possess the faculty of listen-
ing with attention to others. ' Chatty people,' said
he to me (at a later date than the time of which I
have now been speaking), ' get often into a habit of
not listening, and this habit carries itself into all they
do. A person who gives way to this habit will lose
by degrees the power of concentrating his attention,
and without concentration advance in any study is
simply impossible.' This observation tallies admir-
ably with what I have often heard from a valued