"How far advanced ought a person to be in music to begin to teach?"--"Teaching involves three things: first, a knowledge of something on the part of the teacher; second, a corresponding ignorance on the part of the learner; third, the ability to impart this knowledge. These conditions fulfilled might sometimes allow a person to begin to teach with advantage at a very early age and with a very moderate range of acquirements, though, as every instructor knows, his earlier methods were very different from his later ones. The difficulty with young teachers in general is that they try to teach too much at once, like the young minister who preached all he knew in his first sermon. Never introduce more than two principles in any one lesson, and as a rule but one." "Is a mazourka as bad as a polka?"--"No. I think it is not morally so bad as a polka: it has somewhat the grace of the waltz." "Who is the best music-teacher in Boston?"--"As there are twenty-five hundred persons teaching music in and about this city, and seventy-five regular teachers at this Conservatory alone, both ignorance and delicacy on my part should forbid a definite reply. It were well to remember Paris, the apple of discord and the Trojan war." "Is Mr. A---- (a young professor at the Conservatory, voted attractive by the feminine pupils in general) married?"--"This being Leap Year, a personal investigation of the subject might be more satisfactory and effectual than a public decision of this point." At the expiration of her first term Cecilia realizes that her condition is one of constant growth: quickening influences are in the air. She came to Boston to learn music: she is also learning life. She perceives, moreover, that in her musical progress the aesthetic part of her nature has not been permitted to keep in advance of technique. Heretofore she was ever gratifying herself and her friends by undertaking new and more elaborate pieces, not one of which ever became other than a mere superficial possession. Now her taste is inexorably commanded to wait for her muscles: the discipline has been useful to her. After a few more such winters she will return to Woodville a teacher, herself become a quickening influence to others. Musical thought will be truer, will find a more adequate expression, in her vicinity. She will act as a reflector, sending forth rays of light into dark corners farther than she can follow them.