United States or Romania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


There was a long rest. The trainers came forward again and dusted the two remaining champions with sand that they might grip fairly. Pytheas looked keenly in his pupil’s face. “ ‘Well begun is half done,’ my lad; but the hottest battle is still before,” said he, trying to cover his own consuming dread.

The morning arrived: the children were yellow-soaped and flannelled, and towelled, till their faces shone again; every pupil’s hair was carefully combed into his or her eyes, as the case might be; the girls were adorned with snow-white tippets, and caps bound round the head by a single purple ribbon: the necks of the elder boys were fixed into collars of startling dimensions.

One day a stupid boy persisted in holding his violin wrong and suddenly it flew up to the ceiling in a hundred fragments. Poor Camilla fairly cried with fright when the master kicked it out of the pupil’s hands and really had to take refuge in sudden tears. She clung to her instrument with might and main after that. He would not be able to kick it away in that style from her hands.

And though the desperateness of this passion, though the rebelliousness and aimless wildness which streamed to him not only from the character of his pupil but also from that pupil’s first attempts at composition, gave him cause for anxiety, yet he hoped always to soothe the boy by pointing to the high and serene models and masters of his art.

These always brought out the verdict, “Ah! you know nought about it now; but think it over again, and tell me when you understand it.” If there were even partial success in the reply, it was at once acknowledged, and a full explanation given, to which the master would add illustrative examples for the purpose of impressing the principle more deeply upon the pupil’s mind.