Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

MY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
Ab I have said, I had come to St. Petersburg with-
out being aware that Henselt had a large number of
private pupils, and imagining, as I have already said,
that the most I might hope or expect from him was
an occasional examination as to the progress I was
making in his school. I was, therefore, utterly con-
founded to hear a young lady whom I met in a house
to which I had gone with a letter of introduction from
Frau von Henselt observe that she must go away
;now, for she had to play to Henselt by-and-by. She
played very nicely, but it was the playing of a young,
and not by any means a gifted, girl ; and when she
told me that she went to his Excellency every fort-
night, I was astonished, and somewhat hurt that he
had not offered to teach me.
I did not know that this young girl (a teacher) had
not only been taught from her childhood by one of
Henselt's best lady-professors, but that, like all the
pupils who had not reached a certain standard, she
lalways had one or two preparatory lessons from a lady
in the interval between each visit to Henselt. Know-
ing nothing of all this, I ran home in a state of great
agitation, and wrote a long letter to Henselt, to the
effect that, in coming to St. Petersburg to study his
method^ I had indulged in no hopes of being in any
way specially favoured by him ; but if he gave lessons
to Eraulein B , he surely might give them to me.
That, whether he did so or not, I meant to carry out
what I had planned to do in coming to Eussia, but