æsthetic tastes is profitable to all, and no agency contributes so
freely to it as music. Too many people engaged in purely scientific or
practical pursuits have failed to realize this. In those nations known
as musical, and that have become so through generations occupied with
the art, music study is placed on an equal footing with any other worthy
pursuit and no life interest is permitted to exclude musical enthusiasm.

Unless disabled by physical defects, every one displays some sense of
musical sound and rhythmic motion. It is a constant occurrence for
children, without a word of direction, to mark the time of a stirring
tune with hands, feet and swaying motions of the body. A lullaby will
almost invariably soothe a restless infant, and most children old enough
to distinguish and articulate groups of tones will make some attempt at
singing the melodies they have often heard. The average child begins
music lessons with evident pleasure.

It should be no more difficult to strengthen the musical instincts than
any other faculties. On the contrary, it too often chances that a child
whose early song efforts have been in excellent time and tune, and not
without expression, who has marched in time and beat time accurately,
will, after a period of instruction, utterly disregard sense of rhythm,
sing out of tune, play wrong notes, or fail to notice when the musical
instrument used is ever so cruelly out of tune. Uneducated people,
trusting to intuitive perceptions, promptly decide that such or such a
child, or person, has been spoiled by cultivation. This is merely a
failure to trace a result to its rightful cause, which lies not in
cultivation, but in certain blunders in music study.

These blunders begin with the preliminary course on the piano or violin,
for instance, when a child, having no previous training in the rudiments