OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

CONSERVATORY LIFE IN BOSTON.

Our aspiring young friend from the rural districts who comes to Boston, the great musical centre, for the art-training she cannot enjoy at home, is full of enthusiasm as she crosses the threshold of that teeming hive, the New England Conservatory of Music. The conflicting din of organs, pianos and violins, of ballad, scale and operetta, though discordant to the actual ear have a harmony which is not lost to her spiritual sense. It is a choral greeting to the new recruit, who gathers in a moment all the moral support humanity derives from sympathy and companionship in a common purpose. Devoutly praying that this inspiration may not ooze out at her fingers' ends, she goes into the director's sanctum to be examined. This trial has pictured itself to her active imagination for weeks past. Of course he will ask her to play one of her pieces, perhaps several. Has she not, ever since her plans for coming to the Conservatory were matured, been engaged in carefully training, manipulating, her battle-horse for this critical experiment? As the door of that little room closes upon her her knees begin to tremble. But how easy and reassuring is the director's manner! He requests her to be seated at the piano. Will she be able to remember a note at all? That is now the question. Her musical memory is for the nonce obliterated. He may have an intuition of this, for he says quietly, "Now play me a scale and a five-finger exercise." Cecilia does this mechanically, and feels encouraged. Now for the piece, the battle-horse, to be brought out and shown off. She waits quietly a minute. But he asks for nothing more. Her mere touch expresses to his practised ear her probable grade of acquirement, and he assigns her to the instructor he deems best suited to test her abilities and classify her in accordance with them.

In a day or two she finds herself in regular working order, one of a class of four. "And am I only to have fifteen minutes for my lesson," she asks herself, "when I always had an hour from the professor at Woodville?" She knows that recitation is the cream of the lesson. In the actual rendering of her task she can, in justice to her companions, consume but a quarter of the allotted hour, but she soon discovers that she is to a great extent a participant in Misses A——, B—— and C——'s cream. After the master's correction of her own performance, to see and hear the same study played by others with more or less excellence—to compare their faults with her own—is perhaps of greater benefit to her, while in this eminently receptive frame, than a mere personal repetition would be. The horizon is broader: she gets more light on the work in hand.

"And now," she asks of her teacher, "how much would you advise, how much do you wish, me to practise?"

He smiles: memory reverts to his own six hours at Leipsic or Stuttgart, but "milk for babes:" "Certainly not less than two hours a day under any circumstances or obstacles, if you care to learn at all. If you have fair health, and neither onerous household duties nor educational demands upon your time outside of music, let me earnestly recommend you to practise four hours. Less than this cannot show the desired result."

The new pupil accepts the maximum of four hours' daily practice. "I should be ashamed to give less," she generously confides to herself and her room-mate: "it is but a small proportion, after all, of the twenty-four."

But this is not all. There are exercises at the Conservatory apart from her special lessons which are too valuable to a broad musical education to be neglected—the instruction in harmony, sight reading, the art of teaching, analyses of compositions, as well as lectures and concerts. One of the Conservatory exercises strikes her as being alike novel and edifying. This is called "Questions and Answers." A box in one of the halls receives anonymous questions from the pupils from day to day, and once a week a professor of the requisite enlightenment to satisfy the miscellaneous curiosity of six or seven hundred minds devotes a full hour to the purpose. These questions are presumed to relate solely to musical topics, and the custom was instituted for the relief of timid yet earnest inquirers. A motley crew, however, frequently avail themselves of the masquerade privilege to steal in uninvited. Cecilia illustrates these fantastic ramifications of the young idea for the benefit of friends in the interior. She jots down some of these questions and their answers in her note-book:

"How does a polka differ from a schottisch?"—"A schottisch is a lazy polka. A polka is the worst thing in the world: the next worst is a schottisch. A schottisch is so lazy, so slow, that a fire would hardly kindle with it."

"In preparing to play a piece in public should one practise it up to the last moment?"—"Try it and see: you will soon decide in the negative. Lay it aside some time before if you would avoid nervousness."

"What would you give as a first piano-lesson to a young lady who had never taken a lesson before?"—"Make her get the piano-stool at exactly the right height and place: then ensure a good position of her hands and easy motion of the fingers. Let her practise this for three days."

"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 æsthetic 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.

And this is the motive, the mission, of the conservatory system in this country, inasmuch as organized is more potent than individual effort to elevate our national taste, to prepare the way for the future artist, that he may be born under the right conditions, his divine gift fostered and directed to become worthy of its exalted destiny. Already centuries old in Europe, the conservatory is a young thing of comparatively limited experience on our soil. It was introduced here twenty-five years ago by Eben Tourjée. He had longed and vainly sought for the advantages to perfect his own talent, and resolved while a mere boy that those of like tastes who came after him should not have to contend with the obstacles he had fought—that instruction should be brought within the reach of all by a college of music similar to those in Europe, embracing the best elements, attaining the most satisfactory results at the least possible cost to the student. This project, for a youth without capital, dependent upon his abilities for his personal support, was regarded even by sympathetic friends as visionary. But nothing progressive is accepted as a mere optimistic vision by the predestined reformer. Remote Huguenot and immediate Yankee ancestry is perhaps a good combination for pioneer material. However this may be, his efforts were crystallized, shaped, sooner than most schemes of such magnitude. Continuing his classes in piano, organ and voice for a year or two with successful energy, Mr. Tourjée found in 1859 the desired opportunity for his experiment. The principal of a seminary in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, accorded him the use of his building, and more students presented themselves ultimately than could be accommodated on the grounds of the institution. After a visit to Europe for the purpose of examining the celebrated German, French and Italian schools, Mr. Tourjée returned, and, fired with new zeal, started in 1864 a chartered conservatory at Providence. This proved eminently successful. But Boston was the ideal site: talent gravitates toward large cities, and Boston's acknowledged "love of the first rate" would be the best surety for a lofty standard and approximate fulfilment. In 1867, under a charter from the State, he finally transplanted his school to this metropolis under the name of the New England Conservatory of Music, which it retains to the present date. It has, with characteristic American rapidity, become the largest music-school in the world, having within fifteen years instructed over twenty thousand pupils: in a single term it frequently numbers between eight and nine hundred. It has a connection with Boston University, the only one in the country where music is placed on the same basis with other intellectual pursuits, and the faculty numbers some of the most renowned artists and composers in the land. Eben Tourjée was appointed dean of the College of Music in the University, with the title of Mus. Doctor.

The New England Conservatory deserves this special mention as the parent school in America, and it has been promptly and ably followed by the establishment of others in most of our large cities.

F. D.

CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE IN THE WEST OF IRELAND.

[The following extract from a private letter just received from Ireland gives a glimpse of the state of affairs in that country which may interest our readers, as indicating, better than any mere partisan statements or newspaper reports, the solid grounds that exist for apprehension in regard to impending disturbances:]

"I have just returned from a tour in the west of Ireland, and I wish I could describe the horrors I have seen—such abject misery and such demoralization as you, no doubt, never came in contact with in your life. The scenery of Connemara beats Killarney in beauty and the Rhine in extent and magnificence, but no tourist could face the hotels: the dirt, the incompetence, the abominableness of every kind are awful. As these people were two hundred years ago, so they are now—ignorant, squalid savages, half naked, living on potatoes such as a Yankee pig would scorn, speaking only their barbarous native tongue, lying and thieving through terror and want, with their children growing up in hopeless squalor. Very few savages lead such lives, while few people are so oppressed and harassed by the pains and penalties of civilization. For they are chin-deep in debt. I saw promissory notes five and six times renewed, with the landlord, away on the Continent, threatening eviction. The selfishness of the landlords is too revolting. They live in England or on the Continent, and confine their duties in life to giving receipts for their rent. Imagine the whole product of the land, in a country destitute of manufactures and commerce, remitted to England, and the utmost farthing of rent exacted from these wretches, no matter what the season is, a valuation of fifty shillings, for example, paying a rent of seven pounds—three hundred per cent.! Some great catastrophe is imminent. Not a gun is left in the gunsmiths' shops in Dublin, and I am told that shiploads are brought in from America weekly. The people are perfectly right in resisting eviction, but Parliament ought to interpose. We must get rid of the landlords, and we must establish compulsory education. Then the priests will go like smoke before the wind. Free trade is another cause of the troubles. That is one of the most specious humbugs extant, and has ruined the Irish farmers. It may be all right in principle, but now and here it is simply mischievous. Professor ——, who is a member of the new Land Commission, went round with me in Connemara, and implored me to write up the state of the district; but before anything can be published and reach the English ear the autumn rent-day will have come, and the gale will be at its height."

HIGH JINKS ON THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.

To the Editor of Lippincott's Magazine:

It is a remarkable historical fact that the latest visitor to the Upper Mississippi has always felt it his duty to assail the good faith of every previous traveller. Beltrami (1823) attacked Pike (1806); Schoolcraft (1832) fleshed his pen in Beltrami; Allen, who accompanied Schoolcraft, afterward became his enemy and branded him as a geographical quack; Nicollet (1836) arraigned both Schoolcraft and Allen for incompetency; and so on. And now, at this late day, in a mild way tradition repeats itself. Your great original geographer, Mr. Siegfried, concluded his two essays on the "High Mississippi" by saying, "Beyond reasonable doubt our party is the only one that ever pushed its way by boat up the entire course of the farthermost Mississippi. Beyond any question ours were the first wooden boats that ever traversed these waters." Then, after a slap at poor Schoolcraft, he declares that although I claimed the entire trip in my canoe five years ago, my guide and others told him that my Dolly Varden never was above Brainerd, and that my portages above were frequent. Except that, by implication, he questions my veracity, I would not have taken any notice of the feat on which he prides himself. To the general reader the word "Brainerd" conveys no idea further than the one which the author adroitly tries to convey (without saying so), that I did not travel the entire Upper Mississippi: his use of the word "High" is another trick to cover a very small job, as I shall hereafter show. But the fact is, that Mr. Siegfried has discovered a mare's nest. By stating one fact which has never been disguised, and repeating an allegation which is absolutely false, he would dispose utterly of the very trip that made his journey so easy of accomplishment.

I laid out for myself just one task and no more: I started in May, 1872, for the sources of the Mississippi, thence to descend the entire river. After days of inquiry and two trips over the Northern Pacific Railroad, I decided upon a route to Itasca Lake which no white man had ever traversed. I made an entirely successful journey, marking out the White Earth route so clearly that any child could follow it thereafter. What feat is there to go over ground which I described so explicitly as follows?—First stage, to White Earth; second stage, to the Twin Lakes; third stage, across the prairie to the Wild Rice River; fourth stage, up that stream to the Lake of the Spirit Isle; and fifth stage, of half a day, by the Ah-she-wa-wa-see-ta-gen portage, to the Mississippi, at a point twenty-six miles north of Itasca. The same afternoon and the following day, energetically employed, will suffice to put anybody at the sources of "the Father of Rivers." Anybody could take a tissue-paper boat to Itasca after 1872. Had I had a predecessor over this route to Itasca, as Mr. Siegfried had, and could I have travelled as he did with a roll of newspaper letters telling me where to stop and when, how to go and where, I should have been the first to acknowledge my indebtedness to the man who showed me the way. Why did not Mr. S. take Nicollet's or Schoolcraft's route, or seek a new one? Simply for the reason that my itinerary was so clearly laid down that the journey became merely a Cook's excursion. I had built and took with me to Minnesota a paper boat for the descent of the river, but I have never made any secret of the fact that I bought another one (a twin in name and fitted with the appliances of the New York craft) for the tramp of seventy miles through the wilderness from the railroad to the sources. In this I merely followed the example frequently set by Mr. MacGregor, who is the father of canoeing, and the advice of George A. Morrison, government storekeeper at White Earth, the Hon. Dr. Day, United States Indian commissioner, and other gentlemen of equal prominence. Neither of these gentlemen had been over the ground, but they represented the country as awful in the extreme. I acquainted everybody who asked with my decision, and, were it desirable to involve others in this matter, could name fifty persons to whom every detail of this initial stage of my trip has been explained. Not a particle of accurate information regarding the road, the number of days required or the distance could be obtained. It was not possible then to contract for forty-one dollars to be landed on the Mississippi! Mr. Siegfried might have seen at every camping-ground and meal-station along the route the blazed trees bearing the deeply-cut Greek "delta," which seven years' precedence cannot have effaced. His descriptions and mine are identical throughout: therefore, he has either not been over the course at all (which I do not insinuate) or he only proves the accuracy of my reports. He disposes of my fourteen hundred and seventy-one miles of canoeing on the Mississippi because, forsooth! I did not make a small part of it in a craft to suit his liking. He claims that his was the first wooden boat that ever pushed up to Itasca. This is something that I don't know anything about: several parties have been there since 1832. What will he do with the claimant of the first sheet-iron boat?

Mr. Siegfried's allegation that I made frequent portages is grossly and maliciously false. That honor belongs to him, as a few facts will show. In giving the guide as his authority he is most illogical, for in his first article (on three separate pages) he wholly discredits this same man. Again, some information: there are five portages above Aitkin, as follows: first, into the western gulf of Lake Cass, saving six miles; second, Little Winnipeg Lake into a stream leading to the Ball Club Lake (missing the great tributary Leech Lake River); third, at White Oak Point, below the Eagle's Nest Savannah; fourth, Pokegama Falls, a carry of two hundred yards on the left bank (a necessity); and fifth, a cut-off above Swan River, saving six miles. This last was the only portage (except the falls) made by my party, and was availed of to reach good camping-ground before dark. Indeed, as to portaging I must yield the palm to my vainglorious successor. Behold his record! He jumped twenty-six miles in the Ball Club Lake portage, and was still unhappy because he could not ride from the landing below Pokegama to Aitkin (one hundred and fifty miles; see p. 288) on the small steamboat that sometimes runs to the lumber-camp. Reaching Muddy River (now Aitkin), in the language of a free pass, he boarded "the splendid railway" for—Minneapolis!—thus again skipping two hundred and forty-four miles of the river at one bound, and escaping the French Rapids, Little Falls, Pike, Wautab and Sauk Rapids, while I was foolish enough to paddle down to Anoka (as near as I cared to go to St. Anthony's Falls). Thence I portaged to Minnehaha Creek, as he did—another strange coincidence—whence, by daily stages, I descended to Alton, seven hundred and seventy-five miles, where I took steamer for St. Louis, New Orleans, and, finally, New York. Mr. Siegfried, on the contrary, in a distance of six hundred and ninety-six miles from the sources to St. Anthony (Nicollet's official measurement; see U. S. Senate Doc. 237, Twenty-sixth Congress, 2d Session, Appendix), jumped exactly two hundred and sixty miles, or about two-fifths of his whole journey! Some of that water, too, which he so conveniently escaped is very unpleasant, even dangerous, especially Pike Rapids, into which I was drawn unawares, and had to run through at considerable risk to my boat.

FATE OF AN OLD COMPANION OF NAPOLEON III.

L'Indépendant, published at Boulogne, gives some interesting details about a personage that played an important rôle in the history of the last emperor of the French, and has not had much cause to be proud of the gratitude of his patron. This personage was the famous tame eagle that accompanied Prince Louis in his ridiculous expedition to Boulogne, and which was taught to swoop down upon the head of the pretender—a glorious omen to those who did not know that the attraction was a piece of salted pork! This unfortunate eagle was captured at the same time as his master, but while the latter was shut up at Ham, the eagle was sent to the slaughter-house at Boulogne, where he lived many years—an improvement in his fate, says L'Indépendant, since his diet of salt pork was replaced by one of fresh meat. In 1855, Napoleon III. went to Boulogne to review the troops destined for the Crimea and to receive the queen of England. While there some one in his suite spoke to him of this bird, telling him that it was alive and where it was to be found. But the emperor refused to see his old companion, or even grant him a life-pension in the Paris Jardin des Plantes. The old eagle ended his days in the slaughter-house, and to-day he figures, artistically taxidermatized, in one of the glass cases of the museum of Boulogne—immortal as his master, despite the reverses of fortune.

A NATURAL BAROMETER.

Everybody has admired the delicate and ingenious work of the spider, everybody has watched her movements as she spins her wonderful web, but all do not know that she is the most reliable weather-prophet in the world. Before a wind-storm she shortens the threads that suspend her web, and leaves them in this state as long as the weather remains unsettled. When she lengthens these threads count on fine weather, and in proportion to their length will be its duration. When a spider rests inactive it is a sign of rain: if she works during a rain, be sure it will soon clear up and remain clear for some time. The spider, it is said, changes her web every twenty-four hours, and the part of the day she chooses to do this is always significant. If it occurs a little before sunset, the night will be fine and clear. Hence the old French proverb: "Araignée du soir, espoir."

M. H.