yield to the softening influences of "magic numbers and persuasive
sound." In regard to the influence wielded over the mind and heart by
songs, an eminent writer thus speaks: "Songs have at all times, and in
all places, afforded amusement and consolation to mankind: every
passion in the human breast has been vented in song; and the most
savage as well as the most civilized inhabitants of the earth have
encouraged these effusions." The following description of the effects
of music at a reform-school is quite interesting in this connection.
It is clipped from a recent number of "The Boston Transcript."

"A reporter of 'The San Francisco Chronicle,' who recently
visited the industrial school, was very much impressed by
what he saw and learned there concerning not only the
taming, but the reforming and refining influence of a
'concord of sweet sounds.' Attached to the institution is a
music-teacher, who has at all times in active training a
number of boys, who perform on the various instruments that
make up a brass band. This teacher, who is an intelligent
German, and to all appearances an able instructor, testifies
to the wonderful efficacy of music in softening the rugged
nature of the boys, who are sent to school usually because
they are uncontrollable by their parents or guardians. He
says he has noticed the singular fact, that boys whose
aversion to learning was so great that they could not or
would not acquire even a knowledge of their 'a, b, abs,'
took hold with evident relish of the comparatively difficult
study of theoretical music, and in a very short space of
time mastered the notes sufficiently to be able to read a
tolerably hard score or piece of music. This seemed to him
like a phenomenal phase, and he can only account for it on
the ground that a love of music is inherent in the average
bad boy. He has usually in training a band of twenty pieces:
but he says that this number he could easily augment at any
time to two, three, or even four times as many; for he very
rarely finds a boy that has not a taste for some musical
instrument. The greatest trouble he has yet encountered in
the formation of his bands is the fact, that, as soon as his
pupils become really proficient, they are ready for a
discharge for good conduct, the music possessing such an
influence for