ing of her task she can, in justice to her companions,
consume but a quarter of the allotted hour, but she soon discovers that
she is to a great extent a participant in Misses A----, B---- and
C----'s cream. After the master's correction of her own performance, to
see and hear the same study played by others with more or less
excellence--to compare their faults with her own--is perhaps of greater
benefit to her, while in this eminently receptive frame, than a mere
personal repetition would be. The horizon is broader: she gets more
light on the work in hand.

"And now," she asks of her teacher, "how much would you advise, how much
do you wish, me to practise?"

He smiles: memory reverts to his own six hours at Leipsic or Stuttgart,
but "milk for babes:" "Certainly not less than two hours a day under any
circumstances or obstacles, if you care to learn at all. If you have
fair health, and neither onerous household duties nor educational
demands upon your time outside of music, let me earnestly recommend you
to practise four hours. Less than this cannot show the desired result."

The new pupil accepts the maximum of four hours' daily practice. "I
should be ashamed to give less," she generously confides to herself and
her room-mate: "it is but a small proportion, after all, of the
twenty-four."

But this is not all. There are exercises at the Conservatory apart from
her special lessons which are too valuable to a broad musical education
to be neglected--the instruction in harmony, sight reading, the art of
teaching, analyses of compositions, as well as lectures and concerts.
One of the Conservatory exercises strikes her as being alike novel and
edifying. This is called "Questions and Answers." A box in one of the
halls receives anonymous questions from the pupils from day to day, and
once a week a professor of the requisite enlightenment to satisfy the
miscellaneous curiosity of six or seven hundred minds devotes a full
hour to the purpose. These questions are presumed to relate solely to
musical topics, and the custom was instituted for the relief of timid
yet earnest inquirers. A motley crew, however, frequently avail
themselves of the masquerade privilege to steal in uninvited. Cecilia
illustrates these fantastic ramifications of the young idea for the
benefit of friends in the interior. She jots down some of these
questions and their answers in her note-book:

"How does a polka differ from a schottisch?"--"A schott