At this time I went in for music with an earnestness worthy of maturer years; a change of teachers was largely responsible for this.  I began now to take lessons of the organist of the church which I attended with my mother; he was a good teacher and quite a thorough musician.  He was so skillful in his instruction and filled me with such enthusiasm that my progress—­these are his words—­was marvelous.  I remember that when I was barely twelve years old I appeared on a program with a number of adults at an entertainment given for some charitable purpose, and carried off the honors.  I did more, I brought upon myself through the local newspapers the handicapping title of “infant prodigy.”

I can believe that I did astonish my audience, for I never played the piano like a child; that is, in the “one-two-three” style with accelerated motion.  Neither did I depend upon mere brilliancy of technique, a trick by which children often surprise their listeners; but I always tried to interpret a piece of music; I always played with feeling.  Very early I acquired that knack of using the pedals, which makes the piano a sympathetic, singing instrument, quite a different thing from the source of hard or blurred sounds it so generally is.  I think this was due not entirely to natural artistic temperament, but largely to the fact that I did not begin to learn the piano by counting out exercises, but by trying to reproduce the quaint songs which my mother used to sing, with all their pathetic turns and cadences.

Even at a tender age, in playing I helped to express what I felt by some of the mannerisms which I afterwards observed in great performers; I had not copied them.  I have often heard people speak of the mannerisms of musicians as affectations adopted for mere effect; in some cases they may be so; but a true artist can no more play upon the piano or violin without putting his whole body in accord with the emotions he is striving to express than a swallow can fly without being graceful.  Often when playing I could not keep the tears which formed in my eyes from rolling down my cheeks.  Sometimes at the end or even in the midst of a composition, as big a boy as I was, I would jump from the piano, and throw myself sobbing into my mother’s arms.  She, by her caresses and often her tears, only encouraged these fits of sentimental hysteria.  Of course, to counteract this tendency to temperamental excesses I should have been out playing ball or in swimming with other boys of my age; but my mother didn’t know that.  There was only once when she was really firm with me, making me do what she considered was best; I did not want to return to school after the unpleasant episode which I have related, and she was inflexible.