ed of a colored mammy who was left in charge of "Marse John" and
the house while "Miss Mary an' de chillun" were away at the springs.
When the larder needed replenishing she would break the news to her
employer like this: "Marse John?" "Yes, Mammy!" "You know the flour?"
"Yes, Mammy!" "Well, _there ain't none_!" It is even so with our
national music--"there ain't none."

Arthur Farwell, president of the American Music Society, thinks
differently. He says: "One must make a very broad study of the works
of eighty or one hundred American composers before he will begin to
perceive the indisputable American qualities arising in our music. The
endeavor not to repeat, parrot-like, the formulae of the Old World has
driven many American composers to seek out new inventions and has led
to a freshness, in a considerable mass of American work, as in
MacDowell's, which may be said to be directly a product of American
conditions."

Music is seldom a thing of nationality or locality. Early opera in
Germany was Italian and the French grand opera school was founded by a
Florentine. The style of music that appeals most keenly to the people
of a country or community influences largely the method and manner of
its native composers. Authors, musical and literary, write more often
to fill a demand, subjectively felt perhaps, than to create one or to
establish a form representative of their nation or section, though
occasionally, when the author is a genius and fearlessly gives
expression to his own divinity, regardless of precedent, he finds
himself responsible for a new order, though in that case the
individuality of the author is the leaven that leaveneth the lump, and
not the locality.

We are only beginning, as a nation, to recognize music as an essential
to general culture. A new country must become familiar with and learn
to appreciate what has already been done along artistic lines before
it is capable of evolving its own type in any permanent, living
fashion. We have no people's music. "Give me, oh give me, the man who
sings at his work," said Carlyle, and I often think when I hear an
American laborer singing at his task that if dear old Carlyle were
only alive and I _could_ give him the unmelodious disturber of the
public peace, the pleasure would be _all mine_. American music, the
music of the people, is built upon the Puritan hymn tunes and savors
of the persecution that made the Pilgrim Fathers fly to the new land.

Some thi