e, until the picture looks as old
as a monkish costume among modern dress.

All of the great sonatas and symphonies are of this wonderfully varied
form of writing. How full it can be of expressiveness you know from
the Songs without Words by Mendelssohn, and the Nocturnes of Chopin;
how full of flickering humor you hear in the Scherzo of a Beethoven
symphony; how full of deep solemnity and grief one feels in the
funeral marches.[50]

This school of composition has been followed by both the greater and
the lesser masters. Every part is made to say something as naturally
and interestingly as possible, being neither too restricted nor too
free. Then, in playing, both hands must be equally intelligent, for
each has an important part assigned to it.

The great good of study in harmony and counterpoint is that it
increases one's appreciation. As soon as we begin to understand the
spirit of good writing we begin to play better, _because we see more_.
We begin, perhaps in a small way, to become real music-thinkers. By
all these means we learn to understand better and better what the
meaning of true writing is. It will be clear to us that a composer is
one who thinks pure thoughts in tone, and not one who is a weaver of
deceits.

CHAPTER XV.

MUSIC AND READING.

"Truly it has been said, a loving heart is the beginning of all
knowledge."--_Thomas Carlyle._

A beautiful thing in life is the friendship for books. Every one who
loves books pays some day a tribute to them, expressing thankfulness
for the joy and comfort they have given. There are in them, for
everybody who will seek, wise words, good counsel, companies of great
people, fairies, friends for every day, besides wonders we never see
nor dream of in daily life.

Some of the great men have told us about their love for books; how
they have saved penny by penny slowly to buy one, or how after the
day's labor a good book and the firelight were prized above anything
else. All tell us how much they owe to books and what a blessing books
are. Imagine the number of heart-thoughts there must be in a shelf
full of good books! Thoughts in tones or thoughts in words may be of
the heart or not. But it is only when they are of the heart that they
are worthy of our time.

You will not only love books, but gain from them something of the
thoughts they contain. We might, had we time, talk of classic books,
but as we have already talked of classic music we know wha