trations, the child becomes more interested and more likely to follow your suggestion, and the story part of it aids in awakening the imagination in a healthy way. Children often have unhealthy imaginings, and frequently it is found that they are caused by the nurse or others who have the care of them telling them gruesome stories and filling their minds with unreal fears, so that they are stimulated in a false rather than in a true way. Talk to children about nature, of how the plants grow, and the trees blossom and produce fruit; or one may talk in an intelligent way to a child about music, and how even a child life may become musical. Explain to the child how rhythm makes everything beautiful, and how easy it is through the use of rhythm to work and to play, and how it produces a soothing influence of mind and keeps his body in a restful condition. Tell him to listen to the running of the brooks, the singing of the birds, and to hear the beautiful melodies that are to be found in both; that if he will only listen with his ears, he will find wonderful melodies coming from nature that possibly no one has ever heard before. Explain to him how rhythm and melody are of his soul and mind, but that he has to make harmony in his outer world, and that harmony comes through adjusting his little life to the lives of his playmates and others with whom he may be living, and that all real music has in it rhythm, melody, and harmony. In this way you will get him interested in music more quickly, and help to lay a sure foundation for his life. One of the world's greatest philosophers, Plato, has said that "music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life

to everything. It is the essence of order and leads to all that is good, just, and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passionate and eternal form."

"To know,

Rather consists in opening out a way

Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without."

Let the composer of the present cease catering to the morbid, gloomy, vicious, and materialistic thought and sing his song of hope that shall gladden and rejoice the minds of those who are able to receive it. Let the singer and the instrumentalist give of their very best, selecting such compositions as will inspire to courage, and everything that is grand and beautiful. Let all those idealists who can form in mind a true appreciation of the world's needs, in so far as in them lies, bring of the best they have to satisfy a real hungering and thirsting after the ideal. Because the world is hungering and thirsting, and this is typified the world over by unrest.

"O Music! sphere-descended maid,
Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid!
Why, goddess, why, to us denied,
Lay'st thou thy ancient lyre aside
As in that loved Athenian bower

You learn'd an all-commanding power.

'Tis said, and I believe the tale,

Thy humblest reed could more prevail
Had more of strength, diviner rage,

Than all which charms this laggard age.

O bid our vain endeavours cease;
Revive the just designs of Greece;
Return in all thy simple state!
Confirm the tales her sons relate!"

The world is seeking to find something that will satisfy, and in the end such a quest shall not prove in vain. The world of nature is filled with grandeur and beauty of every kind and description, but man can only appreciate this as he unfolds to the great and the beautiful that exists in his own life. Only then will come the full recognition of that which is grand and beautiful in nature. The real education is the unfolding or becoming conscious of our Godgiven qualities, the becoming enlightened by the spirit of love and wisdom, so that the mind becomes filled with a new and living idealism; and this idealism, in turn, is expressed in all man's outer work. Living such a life is music from first to last; music that makes for the real rhythm, melody and harmony, or the full measure of a man. The letter killeth; the Spirit alone giveth life. The world has lived the letter too long; it has brought no real profit. Let it begin to live the life of the Spirit, and we shall have a new renaissance that will bring with it all that goes to make life worth living. The nine Muses will bring of their hidden riches and bestow them on the world; possibly even in a greater measure than may have been done in the past; and the world will pass from darkness into light, and the whole earth will rejoice and be glad,

CHAPTER XVIII

A REFINING INFLUENCE

"My soul is dark-Oh! quickly string
The harp I yet can brook to hear;
And let thy gentle fingers fling
Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear.
If in this heart a hope be dear,

That sound shall charm it forth again:
If in these eyes there lurk a tear,

'Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain.

But bid the strain be wild and deep,
Nor let thy notes of joy be first:
I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,
Or else this heavy heart will burst;
For it hath been by sorrow nursed,
And ached in sleepless silence long;
And now 'tis doom'd to know the worst,
And break at once-or yield to song."

"Then music with her silver sound

With speedy help doth lend redress."

-BYRON.

-SHAKESPEARE.

THE value of true refinement cannot be overestimated, although the world at large is lacking in a real appreciation of its worth. Many people who are highly educated have little, if any, real refinement. The refining influence of life comes from within, but it expresses itself through every spoken word, kindly look, or generous act. A gentleman is not such because of birth, education, position or money, for the combination of all these would not necessarily make a gentleman of anyone.

To refine is to make pure, to eliminate the dross; and the gentleman is made through the refining and the

purifying of his own nature. It is a process of being, a state of becoming. While true refinement comes from within, nevertheless there is much in man's external world that may be used as a means to stimulate this inner growth: intercourse with refined people and an effort to see the beautiful in nature or in art. It might seem, at first sight, that refinement acquired in this way would prove only of a superficial nature, a veneering that simulates rather than something real. To a degree this may be true, for one may begin with imitation, but any effort expended even in this way helps to call out potential qualities that are resident in all people; so outer things may become rungs in the ladder of progress by which we mount to higher states.

All the beauty, rhythm, and harmony we are able to perceive in our outer environment acts on us somewhat like a magnet to call out or to attract the living melody, rhythm, and harmony that lie within, and when the inner is awakened, then we perceive still greater beauties without; so that the outer acts on the inner, and the inner on the outer to produce an ever-expanding life.

Often there is a very real development going on in life so gradually that the person may be all unconscious of its taking place, and even when he becomes conscious that such development has been going on, he may find it difficult to account for. One may listen to a wonderful musical composition without apparently being affected by it, but through coming in contact with others and listening to opinions expressed by them about the composition, the next time he hears it he brings something more to it than he did at first, and becomes conscious of a beauty of melody and