heart.

You will soon see when you have read about the composers that true
music comes out of true life. Then you will begin to love true life,
to be useful, and to help others. But all these things do not come at
once. Yet, as we go along step by step, we learn that art is
unselfish, and we must be so to enjoy it; art is truthful--we must be
so to express it; art is full of life--we must know and live truth in
order to appreciate it. And the study of pure thoughts in music, in
books, and in our own life will help to all this.




CHAPTER XVI.

THE HANDS.


"The skill of their hands still lingers."--_John Ruskin._[52]

In one of our Talks, speaking about the thoughts in our hearts, we
said that they crept from the heart into our arms and hands, into the
music we play, and off to those who hear us, causing in them the
thoughts by which they judge us. Thus we see, that as Janus stands
sentinel at the doorway of the year, so the hands stand between the
secret world of thought within and the questioning world of curiosity
without.

If we were not in such a hurry usually, we might stop to think that