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Show MUSICIANS. It is an old saying that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well, but there are a great many people who can do a great many things passably, yet can do not one thing really well. For instance, there are thousands of persons who can play the piano or the riolin, yet there are only a few really great performers on these instruments, and 'these have reputations all over the world, and wherever they go people will pay good prices to hear them play. Music is a natural gift in a great many cases. All great musicians were born with the peculiar endowment, but their talents never would have been developed without such a vast amount of labor "as would appal weaklings and cause them to give up their ambition if it were not the impelling force of their life. There is probably no field in which there are more mediocre performers than in the musical field, hence it furnishes a good example of what can he accomplished by hard and intelligent work and what tiresome failures come when the person whose desire it is to be a musician is not endowed with the talent and the grit to work out of mediocrity and into the artistic division. It is no exaggeration to say that those men and women who have attained great proficiency on a musical instrument have practiced and studied fifty thousand hours, and to maintain the flexibility of mnscles they have to practice several hours a day as regularly as the day rolls around. Fifty thousand thou-sand hours is equivalent to fifteen or sixteen years of work, with the day not limited to eight hours, either. And the practice arid study must be done with intelligence, directed by intelligence, else the effort will have been wasted and a whole life's work lost. We know of no field in which there are more sacrifices necessary to attain perfection, and where there is so little appreciation from a busy world. A pretty good musician has to work long hours to make a living, and for all social functions where he is hired to perform, there is invariably a desire on the part of those hiring the music to get it just a little cheaper than the first price offered by the musician. It is reasoned that it does not cost the violinist anything to fiddle a few tunes or the pianist pian-ist or organist to perform on their instruments. Which is true. 'But those fifty thousand hours ot toil, those days of despuir when some peculiarly difficult passage seemed impossible of accomplishment, accomplish-ment, those hours of scale studies those years ci preparation should be remembered, and the musician musi-cian should in justice be paid liberally, generously; and by liberally we mean with a largeness of spirit., and by generously with, a nobleness of soul appropriate appro-priate to the high calling of the musician, whose happiness is in giving happiness to others. There is. of course, no real necessity for music or the musicians. The world can get along without them, as it can without pictures and flowers and house decorations. But-Ve would not like to live in a world without these things; we would not like to associate with a people whose ideals were entirely en-tirely of the earth earthy. But there is no danger of such a condition coming, for nearly all men and all the women like pretty things; they like music and pictures and flowers, even' if they do not know one note from another, or cannot draw or paint, or do not know a caruation from a chrysanthemum chrysanthe-mum or. the moss rose from the lily of the valley. All these things serve to make beautiful the world about us, and of them all music is the most intangible in-tangible and yet the most beautiful. We cannot carry it away with us from the concert as we can a flower; it is here for a Winent and it is gone, yet it. leaves its impress upon the hearer which cannot be overestimated in its effect upon his character. Music softens the hard spots in a man's heart; it creates and nourishes into fullness a higher ideal than can be attained without it. Let us have music and lots of it, and the best we can get, but let us be willing to pay a price that will encourage those whose lives are wrapped up in "dreams of melodies! and harmonies," and whose lives arc given to an art that makes the world n more enjoyable place of i abode. - . i |