ause it plays about the break. To choirmasters whose boys flatten,
Herr Eglinger says:--

"Give rest; require a proper use of the registers; get sharp and exact
pronunciation, especially of the consonants; and keep up with a strong
hand the attention and interest of the choir."

I close this chapter by printing a short paper on the subject kindly
written for me by Mr. W. H. Richardson, formerly trainer of the
celebrated Swanley Orphans' Choir, which gave concerts in all parts of
the country. Mr. Richardson, while he was at Swanley, obtained results
of the most remarkable excellence. At Swanley there was no selection of
voices: all were made to sing, and all were individually trained, as
well as collectively. "My conviction," says Mr. Richardson, "is that
there are no more defective voices than there are eyes and ears." The
Rev. W. J. Weekes, late Precentor of Rochester Cathedral, said of the
Swanley boys:--

"The smaller boys were first tested--some thirty or forty little
fellows, some of them new arrivals. Here the tone, though of course not
strong, was pure and sweet, such as would have done credit to cathedral
boys after a couple of years' training, and they 'jumped' their
intervals most clearly, lighting as full and fairly on the correct note
as a bird does on a bough. Thence we moved into the larger schoolroom,
where were assembled some hundred older boys, and such a body of sound,
so full and pure, so free from throatiness, and so true in intonation as
these hundred throats emitted, I certainly never heard from boys' voices
before."

In 1885 I took the late Signor Roberti, teacher of singing in the Normal
College at Turin, and an Italian composer of eminence, to hear the
Swanley boys, and he afterwards wrote to Mr. Richardson:--

"I do not exaggerate in any way by saying that I found there a true
perfection in tune and in rhythm, but above all, in what concerns the
pure and correct emission of voices, the careful and judicious training
of which confers much honour upon you, and I would be happy to see it
even partly imitated by the teachers of the so-called Land of Song."

These facts are enough to prove the weight that attaches to Mr.
Richardson's utterances:--

"My experience has been that flattening will give the teacher very
little trouble after the pupils have been drilled with voice-training
exercises, but until the voices are built and strengthened, he will have
unpleasant surprises of all kinds. If