of music. So for the present, while confidently awaiting
the invention of an improved piano-player, which shall give equally
free expression to every mood and tense of the human spirit--the
operator learns to avoid the very soulful things as much as is
practicable.

At this stage of his development he usually begins to crave that
supreme kind of music which demands a perfect balance of the
intellectual, the sensuous, and the emotional. So he goes more often
to concerts where such music is given. Saturated with it, he returns
to his piano-player and plays the concert all over again. And his
imagination is now so full of the emotional side of what he has just
heard and is re-hearing, that he easily discounts the obvious
shortcomings of the mechanical instrument. This is an excellent way of
getting the most from music. One should not, as many do, take it from
the piano-player before the concert and then go with its somewhat
stereotyped accents so fixed in the mind as to obscure the heart of
the performance. Rather, in preparation, let the score be silently
glanced through. Leave wide the doors of the soul for the precious
spiritual part of the music to enter in and take possession. After
this happens, use mechanical music to renew your memories of the
concert, just as you would use a catalogue illustrated with etchings
in black and white, to renew your memory of an exhibition of
paintings.

* * * * *

The supreme mission of mechanical music is its direct educational
mission. By this I mean something more than its educational mission to
the many thousands of grown men and women whose latent interest in
music it is suddenly awakening. I have in mind the girls and boys of
the rising generation. If people can only hear enough good music when
they are young, without having it forcibly fed to them, they are
almost sure to care for it when they come to years of discretion. The
reason why America is not more musical is that we men and women of
to-day did not yesterday, as children, hear enough good music. Our
parents probably could not afford it. It was then a luxury, implying
expensive concert tickets or an elaborate musical training for someone
in the family.

The invention of mechanical instruments ended this state of affairs
forever by suddenly making the best music as inexpensive as the worst.
There exists no longer any financial reason why most children should
not grow up in an atmosphere