an and must aim at is to have a perfectly sincere point of
view. He must take his chance as to whether his point of view is an
attractive one; but sincerity is the one indispensable thing. It is
useless to take opinions on trust, to retail them, to adopt them; they
must be formed, created, felt. The work of a sincere artist is almost
certain to have some value; the work of an insincere artist is of its
very nature worthless."

Mr. Benson's "charm" is what the virtuoso feels as magnetism. It puts
something into the artist's playing that he cannot define. For a moment
the vital spark flares into a bewildering flame, and all his world is
peopled with moths hovering around the "divine fire."

THE GREATEST THING OF ALL

If we have dwelt too long upon magnetism, those who know its importance
in the artist's life will readily perceive the reason. But do not let us
be led away into thinking that magnetism can take the place of hard
work. Even the tiny prodigy has a career of work behind him, and the
master pianist has often climbed to his position over _Matterhorns_ and
_Mt. Blancs_ of industry. Days of practice, months of study, years of
struggle are part of the biography of almost every one who has attained
real greatness. What a pity to destroy time-old illusions! Some prefer
to think of their artist heroes dreaming their lives away in the hectic
cafes of Pesth or buried in the melancholy, absinthe and paresis of some
morbid cabaret of Paris. As a matter of fact, the best known pianists
live a totally different life--a life of grind, grind, grind--incessant
study, endless practice and ceaseless search for means to raise their
artistic standing. In some quiet country villa, miles away from the
center of unlicensed Bacchanalian revels, the virtuoso may be found
working hard upon next season's repertoire.

After all, the greatest thing in the artist's life is W-O-R-K.

II

ARE PIANISTS BORN OR MADE?

Some years ago the Director of the Leipsic Conservatorium gave the
writer a complete record of the number of graduates of the conservatory
from the founding to the late nineties. Of the thousands of students who
had passed through the institution only a few had gained wide
prominence. Hardly one student in one hundred had won his way into the
most voluminous of the musical biographical dictionaries. The proportion
of distinguished graduates to those who fail to gain renown is very high
at Leipsic compared with man