some
mysterious way superior to the work of the bungler. Thus it is that the
mind of the composer works spontaneously in selecting the musical jewels
for the diadem which is to crown him with fame. During the process of
inspiration he does not realize that he is selecting his jewels with
lightning rapidity, but with a highly cultivated artistic judgment. When
the musical jewels are collected and assembled he regards the work as a
whole as the work of another. He does not realize that he has been
going through the process of collecting them. Schubert failed to
recollect some of his own compositions only a few days after he had
written them.

SOMETHING NO ONE CAN TEACH

"Now the difficulty with students is that they do not take time to
polish the jewels which the composers have selected with such keen
aesthetic discernment. They think it enough if they merely succeed in
playing the note. How horrible! A machine can play the notes, but there
is only one machine with a soul and that is the artist. To think that an
artist should play only the notes and forget the glories of the
inspiration which came in the composer's mind during the moment of
creation.

"Let me play the D flat Chopin Nocturne for you. Please notice how the
notes all bear a relation to each other, how everything is in right
proportion. Do you think that came in a day? Ah, my friend, the
polishing of those jewels took far longer than the polishing of the
Kohinoor. Yet I have heard young girls attempt to play this piece for
me--expecting approbation, of course, and I am certain that they could
not have practiced upon it more than a year or so. They evidently think
that musical masterpieces can be brought into being like the cobwebs
which rise during the night to be torn down by the weight of the dew of
the following morning. _Imbecillita!_

THE BEST TEACHER

"They play just as their teachers have told them to play, which is of
course good as far as it goes. But they stop at that, and no worthy
teacher expects his pupil to stop with his instruction. The best teacher
is the one who incites his pupil to penetrate deeper and learn new
beauties by himself. A teacher in the highest sense of the word is not a
mint, coining pupils as it were and putting the same stamp of worth upon
each pupil.

"The great teacher is an artist who works in men and women. Every pupil
is different, and he must be very quick to recognize these differences.
He should first of