lving
that problem he evolved a method that was the true Jennings's method.
Not in all New York, filled as it is with people living and living well
upon the manipulation of the weaknesses of their fellow beings--not in
all New York was there an adroiter manipulator than Eugene Jennings. He
was harsh to brutality when he saw fit to be so--or, rather, when he
deemed it wise to be so. Yet never had he lost a paying pupil through
his harshness. These were fashionable women--most delicate, sensitive
ladies--at whom he swore. They wept, stayed on, advertised him as a
"wonderful serious teacher who won't stand any nonsense and doesn't
care a hang whether you stay or go--and he can teach absolutely anybody
to sing!" He knew how to be gentle without seeming to be so; he knew
how to flatter without uttering a single word that did not seem to be
reluctant praise or savage criticism; he knew how to make a lady with a
little voice work enough to make a showing that would spur her to keep
on and on with him; he knew how to encourage a rich woman with no more
song than a peacock until she would come to him three times a week for
many years--and how he did make her pay for what he suffered in
listening to the hideous squawkings and yelpings she inflicted upon him!

Did Jennings think himself a fraud? No more than the next human being
who lives by fraud. Is there any trade or profession whose
practitioners, in the bottom of their hearts, do not think they are
living excusably and perhaps creditably? The Jennings theory was that
he was a great teacher; that there were only a very few serious and
worth-while seekers of the singing art; that in order to live and to
teach these few, he had to receive the others; that, anyhow, singing
was a fine art for anyone to have and taking singing lessons made the
worst voice a little less bad--or, at the least, singing was splendid
for the health. One of his favorite dicta was, "Every child should be
taught singing--for its health, if for nothing else." And perhaps he
was right! At any rate, he made his forty to fifty thousand a
year--and on days when he had a succession of the noisy, tuneless
squawkers, he felt that he more than earned every cent of it.

Mildred did not penetrate far into the secret of the money-making
branch of the Jennings method. It was crude enough, too. But are not
all the frauds that fool the human race crude? Human beings both
cannot and will not look beneath surf