it just goes there." I paid my closest attention to her for
the period of four years. In that time she had not only learned to
sing and play, but also studied harmony and languages. Latin and
German she studied in school, Italian in the studio with Professor
Arena, Spanish from her father, who is a linguist. With all this
colossal work for this young mind and her achievements in technic and
languages I was yet dissatisfied, for I had not yet received a
response that I had longed and hoped for while she was drinking in all
this vast amount of knowledge. She never gave out to let me see any
result of all this accumulation of musical knowledge which I knew she
possessed, never asking a question or advancing any question or
enthusiastic outburst of expression. Being romantic in my
interpretation of song I hoped she had imbibed also a strain of it
which she lacked, as I noticed in the beginning. I was at my wits'
ends to find the spring, but she resisted all my efforts. I knew she
was excessively shy but did not think that would prevent her in
showing in some way her appreciation of the instruction and her idea
of what she had formed of all this teaching, explanation and example
in these years.

Her songs were accurately sung in any language with which she was
familiar. Her singing was highly complimented upon, yet there was
something I had not yet found. I sang many hours for her the old and
the new songs and she accompanied with musicianly art, but no
expression came to me from her. I got an idea from her mother which
songs she liked best and I soon found she had supplied herself with
those she did like and I had sung for her in practice. In December,
1909, I at last reaped my reward. She, with other pupils, remembered
me, and before bringing her gift she felt as though she had not given
me enough, and at last she said, "I must do something more," and
entered her room, and closed the door for a half hour. She had given
me in verse what she could not say to me. Her excessive shyness
prevented her, much as she appreciated my singing and teaching and the
interpretation of song and its different modes of expression, whether
it be sacred, descriptive, florid or romantic. She portrayed these
lines with a poet's art--never did Tennyson write his first efforts
with more beautiful description than this young poetess has written in
these beautiful lines which I cannot read without emotion. She gave me
her affectionate expression in