n the contrary, it too often chances that a child
whose early song efforts have been in excellent time and tune, and not
without expression, who has marched in time and beat time accurately,
will, after a period of instruction, utterly disregard sense of rhythm,
sing out of tune, play wrong notes, or fail to notice when the musical
instrument used is ever so cruelly out of tune. Uneducated people,
trusting to intuitive perceptions, promptly decide that such or such a
child, or person, has been spoiled by cultivation. This is merely a
failure to trace a result to its rightful cause, which lies not in
cultivation, but in certain blunders in music study.

These blunders begin with the preliminary course on the piano or violin,
for instance, when a child, having no previous training in the rudiments
of music, starts with one weekly lesson, and is required to practice a
prescribed period daily without supervision. To the difficulties of an
introduction to a musical instrument are added those of learning to read
notes, to locate them, to appreciate time values and much else. The
teacher, it may be, knows little of the inner life of music, still less
of child nature. Manifold perplexities arise, and faltering through
these the pupil acquires a halting use of the musical vocabulary, with
other bad habits equally hard to correct. A constant repetition of false
notes, wrong phrasing, irregular accents, faulty rhythms and a
meaningless jumble of notes dulls the outer ear and deadens the inner
tone-sense. Where there is genius, or decided talent, no obstacle can
wholly bar the way to music. Otherwise, it retreats before the
blundering approach.

Many a mother when advised to direct her child's practicing, or at least
to encourage it by her presence, has excused herself on the plea that it
would bore her to listen. If the work bores the mother it is not
surprising that the child attacks it with mind fixed on metal more
attractive and eyes seeking the clock. Occupations which are repellent
in early life leave behind them a memory calculated to render them
forever distasteful. It is therefore a grave mistake not to make music
study from the outset throb with vital interest. An appeal to the
intellect will quicken the aesthetic instincts, be they never so slender,
and almost any one will love work that engages all the faculties.

Those pupils are fortunate who come under the influence of a teacher
with strong, well-balanced personali