When a difficulty had been overcome, he would smile and say, "That was as I wish. Do it again. Good! Now try and impress upon your mind exactly what you did. Sing it once again. C'est ça! Do not let the old mistake occur again." If one _did_ allow it to reappear, he would shake his head sorrowfully and say, "Jenny Lind would have cut her throat sooner than have given me reason to say, 'We corrected that mistake last time.'" It seemed at first strange, to say the least, to hear these comparisons made between oneself and a pupil who had studied under the same master fifty years previously. However, after studying for three years, I grew used to hearing him speak of musicians who had been dead forty years or more; of a sister who, after a brilliant career, had died in 1836; of a father who had come into the world a hundred and twenty years previously; and of his first singing-master, Ansani, who was born early in the eighteenth century. At any rate, during the last year of study I was able to hear such casual remarks as "Ah, yes, I remember teaching this song to Stockhausen for his _début_" (the great German vocalist being at the time somewhere about seventy years of age), without evincing more than a momentary surprise. Wagner's compositions never attracted Manuel Garcia. The heavy orchestration of the German music did not appeal to him, though he raised no objection to going through Wolfram's song, "O Star of Eve," in the Italian version, "O tu bel astro incantator." "Tannhäuser" was written in a lyrical style: one shudders to think what he would have said to anything like Wotan's "Abschied." He did not believe in "vocalises," such as are used by most teachers in earlier lessons. Instead of these, he preferred to give simple Italian arias. He pointed out that with them one began at once to learn the value of articulation and expression. Exercises he looked on as the foundations of all good singing. They would take the form of sustained and swelled notes, scales, passages of combined intervals, arpeggios, chromatics, and shakes. The acquirement of agility in execution, he used to say, required _at least_ two years' study, the result being that the voice became flexible, even mellow and strong. In the elucidation of difficulties he used to make use of many similes and illustrations, which threw a vivid and illuminating light upon the matter in hand. These, together with the various maxims of artistic singing which he would impart, I used to write down in a book after each lesson, and as a teacher of singing I have found them of the most inestimable value and assistance. When one day I told the maestro that I had decided to devote my whole attention in the future to teaching, he at once sat down and wrote a letter of recommendation, though in his ninety-eighth year,--a typical example of his kindness and thought for the benefit of others.