Memories of a Musical Career (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II LEARNING TO READ ? A SOUL ABOVE POTHOOKS ? THE FIRST MUSIC LESSON ? A WONDERFUL SISTER ? SECRET ASPIRATIONS ? A FIRST ATTEMPT AT COMPOSITION ? INSULAR SNOBBISHNESS 1CAN just remember sitting up at a table in a high chair, when the time came for me to learn to read a large flat book open between my teacher and me. He kept a little cardboard box of sweets beside him, and when Mamma, on the first day, looked at it with suspicion, he told her that it was Scotch mixture and quite pure. After he had made me repeat the names of some large, black letters in the book, he put a sugarplum over each letter, and as soon as I told him the name of the letter I was to have the sugarplum. That is about all I remember of learning to read But I recall how painfully hard it was for me to make pothooks and things in a copy book I never could manage to make two alike, and I could not bear the looks of them Rosie's copy book always looked neat and regular, while mine was all straggly and uneven. I could not see why I should have to do such tiresome, ugly work Besides, I did not like sitting up at the table for such a long while. I longed to be at the piano in Papa's study, playing things out of my own head. One day I heard Mamma say to Papa, I can't keep the child away from the piano; don't you think I might as well teach her her notes? Isn't she too young? asked Papa. Let me see, how old is she? Only four and a half, but what does that matter? She is always singing about the house when she is not at the piano, and she might as well learn to read music, as she doesn't seem to care for anything else, said Mamma. Next day, when I was playing to myself in the study, Mamma came in and sat beside me at the piano. She put on the desk before me a large book w...