There were in the institute about ten large rooms, the entire furniture of which consisted of four, six, or even eight grand pianofortes, placed in dovetailed fashion, before each of which there would, at lesson time, sit a little pupil, and those four or six or eight girls and boys had to play, simultaneously, the same exercises and pieces to the ticking of a Maelzel metronome, the teacher going from pupil to pupil, noting the application of the fingers, the position of the hands, encouraging, scolding, as the case might be, and putting down the marks in each pupil's little record book which every Saturday had to be taken home to be shown to the parents and signed by one of them. To that school which, by the way, was also responsible for the primary musical education of that excellent pianist Mme. Haas, my father and mother, who had a deep love and feeling for music, though practical musicians only in a very modest way, with voice and guitar, sent me when I was just five years old.