na Sacra, the Shawm and
other collections of vocal music adapted for the use of societies and
churches. Nearly everybody sang by note, and she was dull of ear or
wits who could not bear her part at sight in any simple church tune.
The pianoforte took the place of our grandmother's spinet and
harpsichord, and every girl in every family was taught to play upon it
after a fashion. She who had not taste or talent for music gave it up
after her marriage. In this particular she was no more derelict than
the "performer" of our times, whose florid flourish of classic music
costs thousands where her grandmother's strumming cost hundreds.

The musical education of the girl of that period hardly deserved the
name. The national ear for music, like the national eye for painting
and sculpture, has made marvelous progress in fifty years. The singing
school has gone to the wall along with the volunteer choir and the
notion that every boy and girl can and ought to sing. Once in several
whiles you find a "music-mad family," of which every member plays upon
some instrument and studies music with expensive professors. Or one
child displays what relatives rate as musical genius, and is educated
to the full extent of the parent's ability. This done, the proficient
becomes, in his or her own opinion, a privileged prodigy. Critical
from the outset of his musical career, he grows intolerant of amateur
work and disdainful of such compositions as the (musically) unlearned
delight to honor.

"Don't you suppose," said the late Mrs. Barrow (the dearly-beloved
"Aunt Fanny" of a host of little ones) to me at an evening
_musicale_, "that seven out of ten professed disciples of the Wagner
cult here present would, if they dared be unfashionable and honest,
ask for music that has a tune in it rather than that movement in
something flat or sharp to which they have seemed to give breathless
attention for the last fifteen minutes?"

"A tune in it!" repeated a bystander in intense amusement. "Dear Mrs.
Barrow, tunes are musical tricks, not true art."

This dogma, and others like unto it, are putting all our music-making
into the hands of professional artists and hushing the voice of song
and gladness in our homes. The one musician of the household is
accredited with perfect taste and unerring judgment, and usually
becomes a nuisance to his circle of acquaintances. He shudders at a
false note; the woman who sings sharp is an agony, the man who flats
is an