Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

HENSEL T 219
When she had heard me working for a few days,
she came up to me, and in the sweetest and simplest
way imaginable, said, ' How I long to do as you are
doing ! And,' in her simplicity, thinking that she
was offering me an equivalent for what she now asked,
' what I came to say is—there is my piano ; you will
not find its match, even in Berlin, for hire. Do pray
use it as much as you please, if you will but show me
a little of this beautiful method.' She was rather
surprised when I replied that I did not care to play
on her grand pianoforte ; that if she really had such
an earnest desire to get an insight into the Henselt
system, I would most willingly help her—on one con-
dition, but only on one, i.e., that she should begin
right ' from the beginning,' which, as I was aware
that she had a good deal of irregular facility, I
feared, after all, she would scarcely like to do.
This Polish lady had, however, more power of
self-renunciation than I had given her credit for
and she put her neck so thoroughly into the yoke
that, after a few weeks of study, Henselt, on hearing
her practise as he passed by the house, thought that
I was recommencing some of the work I had been
doing with him in the earlier part of the winter at
St. Petersburg, and, meeting me out walking, said in
a tone of remonstrance, ' Why do you begin again to
work at that in which you are already pretty far ?'
He was surprised and much pleased when I told him
it was not I whom he had heard, but a lady who had
;