Treatise on the Construction, Preservation, Repair, and Improvement
of the Violin, by Jacob Augustus Friedheim, Instrument Maker to the
Court of the Archduke of Weimar.

There was a good deal of moral advice in the preface that sadly
puzzled the boy, who was always in a condition of chronic amazement
at the village disapprobation of his favourite fiddle. That the
violin did not in some way receive the confidence enjoyed by other
musical instruments, he perceived from various paragraphs written by
the worthy author of "The Practical Violinist," as for example:

"Some very excellent Christian people hold a strong prejudice against
the violin because they have always known it associated with dancing
and dissipation. Let it be understood that your violin is
'converted,' and such an objection will no longer lie against it . .
. Many delightful hours may be enjoyed by a young man, if he has
obtained a respectable knowledge of his instrument, who otherwise
would find the time hang heavy on his hands; or, for want of some
better amusement, would frequent the dangerous and destructive paths
of vice and be ruined for ever. I am in hopes, therefore, my dear
young pupil, that your violin will occupy your attention at just
those very times when, if you were immoral or dissipated, you would
be at the grogshop, gaming-table, or among vicious females. Such a
use of the violin, notwithstanding the prejudices many hold against
it, must contribute to virtue, and furnish abundance of innocent and
entirely unobjectionable amusement. These are the views with which I
hope you have adopted it, and will continue to cherish and cultivate
it."