My maternal grandfather was not at all musical. He used to say that to him the sweetest note on the piano was when the cover went down! Yet it was he who accidentally discovered a fortunate possession of mine--something that has remained in my keeping ever since, and, like many fortunate gifts, has at times troubled as much as it has consoled me. One day he was standing by the piano in one room and I was playing on the floor in another. He idly struck a note and asked my mother: "What note is that I am striking? Guess!" "How can I tell?" said my mother. "No one could tell that." "Why, mother!" I cried from the next room, "don't you know what note that is?" "I do not," said my mother, "and neither do you." "I do, too," I declared. "It's the first of the three black keys going up!" It was, in fact, F sharp, and in this manner it was discovered that I had what we musicians call "absolute pitch"; the ability to place and name a note the moment it is heard. As I have said, this has often proved to be a very trying gift, for it is, and always has been impossible for me to decipher a song in a different key from that in which it is written. If it is written in C, I hear it in C; and conceive the hideous discord in my brain while the orchestra or the pianist renders it in D flat! When I see a "Do," I want to sing it as a "Do," and not as a "Re." This episode must have been when I was about five years old, and soon afterward I began taking regular piano lessons. I remember my teacher quite well. He used to come out from New Haven by the Naugatuck railway--that had just been completed and was a great curiosity--for the purpose of instructing a class of which I was a member. [Illustration: =Charles Atwood= Maternal Grandfather of Clara Louise Kellogg From a daguerreotype] I had the most absurd difficulty in learning my notes. I could play anything by ear, but to read a piece of music and find the notes on the piano was another matter. My teacher struggled with this odd incapacity; but I used to cheat him shockingly. "_Do_ play this for me!" I would beg. "Just once, so I can tell how it goes." In spite of this early slowness in music reading, or, perhaps because of it, when I _did_ learn to read, I learned to read thoroughly. I could really play; and I cannot over-estimate the help this has been to me all my life. It is so essential--and so rare--for a _prima donna_ to be not only a fine singer but also a good musician.