You can imagine what an ordeal my first lesson was to me. I brought him [Carl Tausig] a long and difficult Scherzo, by Chopin, that I had practiced carefully for a month, and knew well. Fancy how easy it was for me to play, when he stood over me and kept calling out all through it in German, "Terrible! Shocking! Dreadful! O Gott! O Gott!" I was really playing it well, too, and I kept on in spite of him, but my nerves were all rasped and excited to the highest point, and when I got through and he gave me my music, and said, "Not at all bad" (very complimentary for him), I rushed out of the room and burst out crying. He followed me immediately, and coolly said, "What are you crying for, child? Your playing was not at all bad." I told him that it was "impossible for me to help it when he talked in such a way," but he did not seem to be aware that he had said anything. << less