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38 rehearsals frequently at home. Alexander had to leave his turning-lathe for these rehearsals, and the seldom enthusiastic sister writes of him, "his solos on the violoncello were divine." It was work without intermission. Even at meal-times William was generally employed "contriving or making drawings of whatever came in his mind." Tea and supper were served without interrupting the work he had on hand. While he was at the turning-lathe or polishing mirrors for telescopes, Caroline read to him Don Quixote, the Arabian Nights, a novel of Sterne or Fielding. In course of time she became as useful a member of the household as a boy might be to his master in the first year of his apprenticeship. Still more "to drill me for a gentlewoman (God knows how she succeeded) two lessons per week for a whole twelvemonth from Miss Fleming, the celebrated dancing-mistress," were deemed indispensable. The drollery of the thing! "As I was to take part the next year in the oratorios!" nothing is wanting to complete the fun but "two lessons per week" at so much a lesson! The old lady who wrote this story of work and drollery—both of them perhaps detested by her when she was still a fraulein fresh from her poor Hanover home—may have laid the colours a little too thickly on the picture of work, earnest, all-absorbing work, and absurd fun, which she left to posterity. We may well be gratified she has, for if she escaped from the sneers of bullying Jacob, she certainly fell into the hands of exacting William. The difference was that she detested the former, worshipped the latter, and made a great name for herself as well as helped to make a greater for him.

She entertained the idea that her power as a singer