y grow side by side.
The same sun shines upon them all, the same wind and the same rain
come to them, selecting no one before another. What are they all
doing? Each living its true life, as best it can. It is true they may
not come and go, they may not choose, but as we see them, beautiful in
their leaves and branches we feel the good purpose to which they live
and, unconsciously, perhaps, we love them.

Among us it is quite the same. Some are more skilful than others. But
be our skill great or small, we are not truly using it until we have
devoted it to a worthy purpose. And as with us, so it is with the
musicians. There are the great and small. The great ones--leaders of
thought--we call the great masters. The lesser are earnest men, who
have not as much power as the masters, but they are faithful in small
things.

They sing lesser songs it is true, but not less beautiful ones. Often
these lesser ones think more as we do. They think simply and about the
things which we have often in our minds. It is such thoughts as these
which we have in our best moments that we love so much when we see
them well expressed by one who is a good and delicate writer, either
of tones or words. Particularly do we understand these thoughts well
in the first years of our music when nearly all the works of the
greater composers are above us.

Thus are the many composers (who yet are not great masters) of value
to us because they write well a kind of thought which is pure and full
of meaning, and which we can understand. They give us true pleasure
day after day in the beginning and seem at the same time to help us
onward to the ability of understanding the great masters. This they do
by giving our thought training in the right direction.

Now, we know that the very best music for a young musician to learn in
the first days is that of the lesser tone masters, together with those
simpler pieces of the great composers which come within his power to
comprehend--within the power of a child's hands and voice. Let us see,
once again, if it is not clear:

True composers, great and small, sing from the heart. If one having a
little skill turn it unworthily away from the good and true work he
might do, then he does not use rightly his one talent. He does not
give us true thought in tone. He writes for vanity or a low purpose,
and is not a lesser master but he is untrue.

It is not our right to play anything. We may rightly play only that
which