In pursuance of the usual system of my mother, the person who instructed my sister in music — Billy Warren, as we familiarly called him—became soon an intimate in the family, and was morning and night a constant visitor. The consequence was that, though I never received from him any regular lessons in playing, yet by standing often to listen when he was instructing my sister, and endeavouring to pick out tunes – or make them – when I was alone, I became a piano-forte player (at least sufficiently to accompany my own singing) before almost any one was in the least aware of it.