gentle too. On one occasion when he heard that an English lady, a perfect stranger to him, had not been able through ill-health to attend his recital, he went to her house next morning and played for her the whole programme. He was a devoted admirer of the fair sex, and was never happier than when paying compliments to a pretty woman. When he was in London the Princess of Wales sent for him, and he met her with the naïve remark that he was delighted to see her looking so lovely. More than that, he proceeded to kiss her hand, and when the Princess with drew, saving hastily it was not the custom in England, Rubinstein replied blandly, "With us, it is the law." Under the spell of his genius hundreds of women threw themselves in his path. "It is quite strange," he would say, "but I love them all, even tenderly, though they do not believe it." It was absolute torture to him to know that a woman who had once loved him could forsake him for another, and this "not because I care for the woman, but because I am an egotist. Of the mental powers of the sex, he had no exalted opinion. Women, he said, go a certain length, defined and definable, and beyond this they never get; but, he added, "they are adorable, and if deprived of their society, I would hang myself."

As to Rubinstein's playing, what shall be said? His virtuosity was unique to such an extent, that there was truth even in the remark of the humorist that Rubinstein's wrong notes were better than the right notes of others. There were no difficulties for his fingers he even invented difficulties hitherto unheard of, for the mere pleasure of conquering them. And his kinds of "touch" were so varied! He occasionally showed such strength of finger that people would look under the piano to see whether he had not smashed through the keyboard. It was as if he thrashed the piano as an hereditary foe with whom he had to settle an account of long standing. Many an instrument broke down under the trial. Yet Rubinstein could play as delicately and as sweetly as Chopin himself, and if he were accompanying a vocalist, it was sometimes difficult to

tell whether the piano or the vocalist was doing the singing. This combination of touches' was the more remarkable considering the physical aspect of his fingers, which were short, thick, and blunt, affording no promise of pliancy or of feathery lightness, but rather the reverse. But Rubinstein himself could give the explanation, and if he did give it, it was in the words of the Greek saying: "The gods sell to us all good things for labor.

Twenty years have elapsed since Hans von Bülow first appeared in this country, and the younger generation cannot, of course, remember the extraordinary impression he created among a public accustomed solely to a school of playing remarkable for entire absence of original thought and variety of expression. But the number of eminent pianists who crowded on Bülow's heels lessened greatly the excitement produced by his earlier appearances, and in later years he came to be known better for his eccentricities than for his achievements as an artist. When a pianist told his admirers that he preferred beefsteaks to bouquets, it was more likely that they should remember the saying than the particular way in which he rendered a Beethoven sonata. The Bulow anecdote has in truth become a trifle doubtful in these days, for all the floating musical wit of the time is being fathered upon the eminent pianist. Still, there is a sufficient body of authentic story to serve the wants of the most voracious raconteur. There was indeed seldom a concert or a recital of Bülow's from which one might not carry away some amusing reminiscence. In Berlin he was once conducting one of Beethoven's concertos. In the pause before the Dead March, which constitutes the second movement, Bülow, in deference to the funeral music, was seen rapidly to take off his ordinary white gloves and substitute a pair of faultless black kids, which disappeared again as soon as the Dead March was played. had a fondness for this kind of display. In Berlin, while he was engaged as conductor at one of the opera-houses, the management decided to produce an operetta which he regarded as worthless, and therefore declined to conduct.

He

While the work was being performed, Bülow sat in one of the boxes close to the orchestra, attired in a mourning hat with long black streamers, a lemon and white handkerchief in his hand, according to the German custom at funerals. The whimsicality was presently explained when Bülow confided to one of his friends that the operetta was being buried, and that Herr von Bülow now attended at the obsequies! While conducting, he was perfectly free and easy, and he would think nothing of stopping to address the audience, or to admonish a lady who persisted in waving her fan out of time with the music. Not long before his death he was conducting a concert in Berlin, when he took it into his head to make speech about Bismarck, at the close of which he called upon the audience and the band for a "Hoch." The audience obliged him with a cheer; but the band did not see the fun of the thing, and remained stoically silent. This was too much for Bülow, who stepped in front of the audience, deliberately took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the dust from his shoes, and walked majestically off the platform. Bülow was magnetically attracted by satirical souls. When he asked a Vienna friend, "How do you like the pianist B-?" and received the reply, "He possesses a technique which overcomes everything easy with the utmost difficulty," he exclaimed with peals of laughter, "That's the sort of talk I like." And that was the sort of talk he indulged in himself. Midway in the seventies, when he conducted in Glasgow, the local musicians and friends of the art gave him a grand banquet. Toward the end of the even ing, when everybody was in high spirits, Bülow rose, and in the coolest possible manner administered the following damper: "Gentlemen, I have the greatest admiration for your concerts and all your musical conductors. only regret to say that they resemble too much the omnibus conductors. You ask why? Because they are always behind-omnibus conductors behind on the vehicle, musical conductors behind in time." Nor did he spare even his friends when he was in the sarcastic mood. On a certain occasion

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he was conducting a concert in Hamburg, and one of the pieces to be performed was Rubinstein's Ocean Symphony. What did he do? He sniffed at the score, turned it upside down on the desk, and then throwing it aside, said, "To conduct music like this, one must have long hair; I have not got it." This story, by the way, was told to Rubinstein shortly after, and he at once wrote to Bülow. "I wrote him,' he says, "that his opinions were never the same two days running, and inasmuch as that which he abused to-day he praised to-morrow, there was still hope for my poor music. Also, if he had taken the trouble to measure my hair, I regretted not having had leisure to measure his ears.

Agreeable and polite as a rule, Bülow had one rather disconcerting peculiarity, when he met any one to whom for any reason he felt a repugnance. He never noticed the individual, but got away as quickly as he could. At Copenhagen a 'cellist was introduced to him with a possible view to an engagement. The poor man was not only possessed of great artistic talent, but also of an enormous nose. Bülow stared at him for a moment, and then rushed away with the remark: "No, no! this nose is impossible." Tenor singers as a body he did not like, probably because of their affectations, and it was this antipathy that led to his witticism that the tenor is not a man, but a disease. He was extremely fond of animals, and when resident in Berlin he very often spent his afternoons at the Zoological Gardens. He was a great circus-goer, but as likely as not he would go to sleep in the middle of the performance. Indeed, like Napoleon, he could sleep almost anywhere and at any time. The Director of the Opera at Rotterdam once invited him to a performance of Nessler's Ratcatcher of Hamelin. At the close, when the musician naturally looked for a compliment, Bülow went on the stage, and with a gracious bow said,

but he could not sit out long dinners, and would get up in the middle and retire with a cigarette. Both he and Rubinstein were tremendous smokers,

but Rubinstein beat him hollow with something like seventy-five cigarettes a day.-Chambers's Journal.

THE "Blunders of Philosophy" would doubtless furnish a wider and a deeper theme, and at the same time a more familiar one, than the "Philosophy of Blunders." But as the number of blunderers is probably considerably larger than the number of philosophers, and as it may be more comforting to believe that there is philosophy in most blunders than that there are blunders in most philosophies, there may be a certain advantage in adhering to the title of this paper rather than its con

verse.

The whole subject of the Philosophy of Blunders, it must be confessed at the outset, is at once too wide for this paper and too deep for its writer. The blunders to be discussed are only some of those which come under the notice of an examiner in the course of oral and written examinations of various grades.

The process of examination may be regarded as a kind of thinking by proxy, or of co-operative thinking, either in the form of reminiscence or of reasoning. If the examination is mainly on matters of fact, or a revisal of matter previously committed to memory, it takes the form of remembering by proxy. If the questions assume the form of what would be described in arithmetic as a problem, or in geometry as a rider, the process is that of reasoning by proxy. That is, of course, looking at it from the examiner's point of view. From the side of the examine there is, unfortunately, nothing vicarious in the proceeding it is severely personal.

The expression" thinking by proxy,' however unjustifiable or inexact, has been used to bring out the fact that the examiner does not merely ask questions, as one would do who desires information. His mind has already performed a certain course of reminiscence or of reasoning regarding the subject

under review. He then initiates the same process in the mind of the pupil or candidate by suggesting to him the first links of the same chain of thinking, with the object of discovering how far that mind is qualified by training and information to complete the chain.

Now it is clear that the required chain of reminiscence may fail in the case of the pupil from a variety of causes. In the first place, there may be ignorance of certain facts or events embraced in it. Again, the clue given by the examiner may be insufficient to suggest the next link in the series; and this may result either from a real defect in the form of the question, or from a relative defect as regards some individual pupil who has been accustomed to a more suggestive form of question. Or again, at some point in the chain, some irrelevant series of ideas may appear instead of that expected by the examiner, due to a misleading association in the pupil's mind

this arising either from some want of clearness in the teaching, or from misapprehension of it, when the subject was first presented to the pupil.

The performance of a chain of reasoning, which is more or less new to the pupil, may also fail from various causes. Some of the more obvious may be mentioned. The data supplied by the examiner may be insufficient, misleading, or misapprehended. There may be a weakness of the reasoning power which might fairly have been expected from the pupil, either general or confined to the subject of examination. Or there may be a want of information as to the subject, or an imperfect memory of the facts required, due to any of the various sources of incorrect reminiscence mentioned in the preceding paragraph.

So much for the more obvious causes of partial failure in this process of thinking by proxy-thinking begun

by the examiner and continued by the pupil for him. Partial failure is all that concerns us at present. Total failure does not amount to blunder or error, which is always a partial truth. Mere ignorance is never equivalent to blunder that is always error or falsehood masquerading in the garb of truth. It is literally a mis-take. In mere ignorance there is nothing to take, either amiss or otherwise. The pupil who is merely ignorant of a subject, and knows he is ignorant of it, does not blunder; he holds his peace. It is he who is ignorant, and does not know it, that cheers the examiner's heart with those refreshing blunders, the gleaning of which is sometimes supposed to form the favorite occupation of professional examiners.

It has already been stated that any stoppage or divergence of the desired train of thought may be due to the examiner as well as to the pupil. It may even he broadly asserted that in perhaps a majority of cases of blunder, as distinct from mere failure to answer, the examiner is responsible rather than the pupil. The latter takes the words of the former literally, and without the qualification which an adult mind would probably feel to be necessary; the result is, from the examiner's point of view, a blunder. But in dealing with immature minds one should be careful to say what he means. Examples of blunders due to this cause will doubtless be easily recalled by such readers as have had anything to do with elementary school-work. One may be quoted. A little boy in the course of his reading lesson came to the word "widow." and called it window," a word more familiar to him. The teacher, who was acting as examiner, corrected the blunder, and then, wishing to improve the occasion, put the question, "What is the difference between widow' and' window'?" The boy's answer began, "You can see through a window, but-" and then stopped. The amusement plainly visible on the teacher's face prevented this miniature Sam Weller from completing the contrast. Now, the blunder here, so far as it was a blunder, was entirely due to the teacher. He did not mean to impress on his pupils the transpa

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rency of a window as contrasted with a widow, but the difference in spelling between the two words.

The following instance, taken from a school in the same village as that just referred to, though it is not an actual case of blunder, serves to illustrate the fact that the younger mind is sometimes the more accurate. The teacher of an infant class was talking to her children one morning about birds. The fact had been dwelt on that birds have wings where we have arms, and that by these wings they have the power of flying. In winding up the lesson, just before dismissing the class for lunch, the following question was put, in order to stimulate the imagination of the children regarding the subject," Now, would you not all like to have wings, as the birds have, so that you could fly straight home as soon as you get out?"" There was a chorus of assent, but one cautious little fellow shook his head and answered "No." Why not?" asked his teacher, surprised. "Because I could not sup. And this little dissentient had alone grasped the bearings of the question. The choice suggested was wings in place of arms and hands: had it been wings in addition to these he would have felt safe to answer Yes; but without hands how could he sup his kail or his porridge? Better walk home with that pleasure in view than fly home without it.

Besides the unconsciously incomplete question in examining or in teaching, we often have the intentionally incomplete question, or elliptical question, as it is technically called. It is not really a question at all, but a form of the missing word competition," which still survives. The examiner makes a statement which he asks the children to complete for him. The clue is either so obvious as to make the exercise quite worthless for the end in view, or else so obscure that nothing but a lucky guess can discover the missing word. In either case it is worthless for the purposes of examination, and pernicious for those of teaching. The following is selected from among many as an example of how this kind of question sometimes works. The subject of lesson was the "Miraculous

draught of fishes." "Simon said, 'We have toiled all night and caught nothing,' "quoted the teacher; "then they let down the net, and enclosed a great multitude of fishes; now then, Simon was a -?" "Disciple," replied one lad. Apostle," another suggest ed but these answers were waved aside. The quotation was given again, and this time the apparently pertinent answer Fisherman" was offered, but not accepted. The class was now quite at a loss to see what particular aspect of Simon was in the teacher's mind. One more trial he made, emphasizing the contrast between "catching noth ing" and "enclosing a great multitude of fishes. One boy saw the contrast clearly now, and drew a startling conclusion now, then," the teacher repeated, "Simon was a- ?" "Leear," replied the boy, and for the sake of euphony we leave the answer in the boy's own dialect. The teacher was somewhat shocked, no doubt, and the class somewhat amused, but the question was not answered. And so the teacher began the quotation again, this time filling up the ellipsis himself, Now, then," he concluded, "Simon was a-stonished." And no doubt so were the pupils, as well as the other listeners.

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Another question may be quoted, not, indeed, elliptical, but admitting a yet wider variety of answers. The young teacher wished to lead up to the word" Labor," the subject of his proposed lesson, and began, "If anybody does anything, what does he do?" No articulate answer was offered to that question.

Coming next to blunders for which the examiner cannot be held responsible, it must be admitted that many of these defy classification. But they generally fall into two groups-those due to defective memory, and those due to defective reasoning. In so far as there is error and not mere failure to answer, these might be otherwise described generally as the substitution of reasoning for memory, and the substitution of memory for reasoning. By far the most numerous group will be found to be that which consists of blunders due to the substitution of memory for reasoning. This is the

most common type of blunder due to defective training in reasoning, the remainder of this genus usually consisting of blunders due to reasoning from a false analogy. But the substitution of reasoning for memory is perhaps productive of specimens which are more amusing.

In the examples immediately following, defective memory and analogical reasoning are together responsible for the blunders. The child was in each case expected to answer from memory, as the matter had been previously explained in the class.

In the first instance, the subject of examination was Jesus and the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. "What were they doing on the seashore ?" was asked. "Gathering buckies," was the answer given by a child, whose recollection of the seashore was more vivid than that of his previous lesson.

The second example comes from the same school. In rehearsing the story of the Nativity at Bethlehem, the question was put, "Why was there no room in the inn ?" Because it was pay-day," came at length from a little fellow, who seemed to know well the appearance of the "inn" on the fortnightly pay-day in the mining village where he lived.

The third example of this kind is drawn from a northern Sunday-school. The subject of lesson was the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Why did the people strew palm branches in the way?" asked the teacher. One pupil, impressed no doubt by the hostility of one section of the Jews rather than by the enthusiasm of the other, gave the startling explanation, "To trip the cuddy.'

This kind of blunder, it may be noted, is perhaps more common in Scripture lessons than in any other kind. And the reasons for this are plain. Analogies from personal experience are certain to mislead when applied to scenes so different in every way. At the same time, and often for the same reason, the subjects are less clearly understood, and less vividly present to the imagination, so that memory has to work under serious disadvantages. In such a case memory