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What Miss Arbe called trying the instrument, was selecting the most difficult passages, from the most difficult music which she attempted to play, and making Ellis teach her the fingering, the time, and the expression, in a lesson which lasted the whole morning.
Miss Arbe, who aspired at passing for an adept in every accomplishment, seized with great quickness whatever she began to learn; but her ambition was so universal, and her pursuits were so numerous, that one of them marred another; and while every thing was grasped at, nothing was attained. Yet the general aim passed with herself for general success; and because she had taken lessons in almost all the arts, she concluded that of all the arts she was completely mistress.
This persuasion made her come forward, in the circles to which she belonged, with a courage that she deemed to be the just attribute of superiour
