to fill a demand, subjectively felt perhaps, than to create one or to
establish a form representative of their nation or section, though
occasionally, when the author is a genius and fearlessly gives
expression to his own divinity, regardless of precedent, he finds
himself responsible for a new order, though in that case the
individuality of the author is the leaven that leaveneth the lump, and
not the locality.

We are only beginning, as a nation, to recognize music as an essential
to general culture. A new country must become familiar with and learn
to appreciate what has already been done along artistic lines before
it is capable of evolving its own type in any permanent, living
fashion. We have no people's music. "Give me, oh give me, the man who
sings at his work," said Carlyle, and I often think when I hear an
American laborer singing at his task that if dear old Carlyle were
only alive and I _could_ give him the unmelodious disturber of the
public peace, the pleasure would be _all mine_. American music, the
music of the people, is built upon the Puritan hymn tunes and savors
of the persecution that made the Pilgrim Fathers fly to the new land.

Some think that the negro melodies should form the basis of our
American music; but why? The negro is an importation, not a native,
and if we want the real thing, it seems to me that we will have to
find it in the Indian melodies, but it will take artistic handling to
develop them from aboriginal simplicity to the intricacy necessary to
represent in any sense present-day, cosmopolitan America.

Universality is just now the philosophical ideal, and it seems to me
that America, the composite nation, is the proper center from which
such a spirit should emanate. Why try to foster the limited local idea