All his music teachers said it would be wicked not to keep him at the piano. But that was easier said than done. When, at the age of fifteen, he went with his mother to Paris, he passed fine examinations for entrance to the French Conservatory and learned the French language in no time, so as to understand the teachers and lecturers. But he was still apt to forget that he went to his classes to listen and spent much time sketching the faces of teacher or pupils on the margin of his note-book. MacDowell was busy one day, over a picture of a teacher who had a large, queerly shaped nose, when the teacher, seeing that the boy was paying no attention to the lesson, darted to his seat and seized the sketch. MacDowell was frightened and imagined he would be punished. But the teacher was not a bit angry when he saw how true the lines were. He asked to keep the paper and a few days later called on Mrs. MacDowell. "Madam," he said, "I have shown the picture your son drew of me to an artist of the School of Fine Arts, and this gentleman is so sure Edward is meant for a portrait painter that he offers to pay all his expenses for three years and to give him lessons free of charge." This was a grand chance for a poor boy. Mrs. MacDowell did not want to make any mistake. She looked at the teacher a minute and asked: "What would _you_ do?" "Why, I am sure he will make a famous piano player." There was the same old tiresome question: if Edward could do three or four things well, how was any one to know which he might do best? Finally the matter was left to Edward. After a good many days of thinking, he decided his life should be given to music. Art was given up, and Edward promised to waste no more time on his drawing. But he was a great reader and liked good books to the end of his days. After study of the piano in Paris, MacDowell went to Frankfort for two years. He had many pupils there, and to one of them he was married. The young married couple crossed the ocean and stayed in Boston long enough for MacDowell to give some concerts. His fingers were like velvet on the keys of the piano, and every one declared he must take part in a grand American concert that was to be given during the Paris Exposition. He did as he was asked, and the French people waved their handkerchiefs and cried in their language: "Good for the little American!" The French people invited him everywhere and begged him to remain in Paris, but from first to last Edward MacDowell was a loyal American, and he returned to Boston, where for eight years he played in concerts, took pupils, and best of all wrote much of the music which makes Americans so proud of him. He became a professor of music in Columbia College, and his piano pieces were played the world over.