of the best music. And I believe that so
soon as parents learn how to educate their children through the
phonograph or the mechanical piano, the world will realize with a
start that the invention of these things is doing more for musical
culture than the invention of printing did for literary culture.

We must bear in mind, however, that the invention of mechanical
instruments has come far earlier in the history of music than the
invention of printing came in the history of literature. Music is the
youngest of the fine arts. It is in somewhat the same stage of
development to-day that literature was in the time of Homer. It is in
the age of oral--and aural--tradition. Most people still take in music
through their ears alone. For all that the invention of note-printing
means to them as enjoyers of music, they might almost as well be
living aeons before Gutenberg. Musically speaking, they belong to the
Homeric age.

Now the entrance of mechanical music upon the scene is making men
depend on their ears more than ever. It is intensifying and speeding
up this age of oral tradition. But in so doing, I believe that it is
bound to shorten this age also, on the principle that the faster you
go the sooner you arrive. Thus, machinery is hastening us toward the
time when the person of ordinary culture will no more depend on his
ears alone for the enjoyment of music than he now depends on his ears
alone for the enjoyment of Shakespeare.

Thanks to machine-made music, the day is coming the sooner when we
shall behold, as neighbors in the ordinary bookcase, such pairs of
counterparts as Milton and Bach, Beethoven and Shakespeare, Loeffler
and Maeterlinck, Byron and Tschaikowsky, Mendelssohn and Longfellow,
Nietzsche and Richard Strauss. Browning will stand up cheek by jowl
with his one true affinity, Brahms. And the owner will sit by the
quiet hearth reading to himself with equal fluency and joy from
Schubert and Keats.

X

MASTERS BY PROXY

_It is only in a surrounding of personalities that
personalities can as such make themselves seen and heard._

HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN.

Between many of my readers and the joyful heart there seems to stand
but a single obstacle--their lack of creativeness. They feel that they
could live and die happy if only they might become responsible for the
creation of something which would remain to bless mankind after they
are gone. But as it is, how can they have the joyful