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are apt to run off like an unbroken colt as soon as they have gained some degree of fluency.
The opposite fault of hanging back, or dragging in the time, generally proceeds from our having begun too fast; and by that means stumbling against difficulties which we cannot overcome in that quick degree of movement.
Hence this capital rule: never begin a piece quicker than you can with certainty go on with it to the very end.
There are exceptions to this rule, which you will be taught by and by, when you learn the higher branches of expression and execution.
You will already have remarked, how necessary correct fingering is in playing. A single ill-chosen finger may often cause the complete failure of a whole passage, or, at least, make it sound coarse, unequal, and disagreeable. As doubtless you have studied all the elementary pieces exactly with fingering indicated, your fingers are, to a certain degree, already accustomed to a regular system of fingering. But as, in other compositions, you may, by and by, be often in doubt on this head—before you proceed to the Second Part of this Pianoforte School, which treats of fingering—I will impart, by the way, a few rules on this subject, as to what must be observed or avoided in every regular system of fingering.
