* * * * *

You will be most readily cured of vanity or presumption by studying the
history of music, and by hearing the master pieces which have been
produced at different periods.

* * * * *

A very valuable book you will find that: On Purity in Music, by Thibaut,
a German Professor. Read it often, when you have come to years of
greater maturity.

* * * * *

If you pass a church and hear an organ, go in and listen. If allowed to
sit on the organ bench, try your inexperienced fingers and marvel at the
supreme power of music.

* * * * *

Do not miss an opportunity of practising on the organ; for there is no
instrument that can so effectually correct errors or impurity of style
and touch as that.

* * * * *

Frequently sing in choruses, especially the middle parts, this will help
to make you a real _musician_.

* * * * *

What is it to be _musical_? You will not be so, if your eyes are fixed
on the notes with anxiety and you play your piece laboriously through;
you will not be so, if (supposing that somebody should turn over two
pages at once) you stop short and cannot proceed. But you will be so if
you can almost foresee in a new piece what is to follow, or remember it
in an old one,--in a word, if you have not only music in your fingers,
but also in your head and heart.

* * * * *

But how do we become _musical_? This, my young friend, is a gift from
above; it consists chiefly of a fine ear and quick conception. And these
gifts may be cultivated and enhanced. You will not become musical by
confining yourself to your room and to mere mechanical studies, but by
an extensive intercourse with the musical world, especially with the
Chorus and the Orchestra.

* * * * *

Become in early years well informed as to the extent of the human voice
in its four modifications. Attend to it especially in the Chorus,
examine in what tones its highest power lies, in what others it can be
employed to affect the soft and tender passions.

* * * * *

Pay attention to national airs and songs of the people; they contain a
vast assemblage of t