a differs very
slightly from musical education abroad.

But we are deserting our young virtuoso most ungallantly. In Berlin she
hears so many concerts and recitals, so many different styles of
playing, that she begins to think for herself and her sense of artistic
discrimination--interpretation, if you will--becomes more and more
acute. Provided with funds for attending concerts, she does regularly,
whereas in America she neglected opportunities equally good. She never
realized before that there could be so much to a Brahms _Intermezzo_ or
a Chopin _Ballade_. At the end of her first year her American
common-sense tells her that a plunge into the concert field is still
dangerous. Accordingly she remains two, or possibly three, more years
and at the end if she has worked hard she is convinced that with proper
management she may stand some chance of winning that fickle treasure,
public favor.

"But," persists the reader, "it would have been possible for her to have
accomplished the same work at home in America." Most certainly, if she
had had any one of the hundred or more virtuoso teachers now resident in
the United States all of whom are capable of bringing a highly talented
pupil to virtuoso heights,--and if in their teaching they had exerted
sufficient will-power to demand from the pupil and the pupil's parents
the same conditions which would govern the work of the same pupil
studying in Europe. Through long tradition and by means of endless
experiences the conditions have been established in Europe. The student
who aspires to become a professional is given a distinctively
professional course. In America the need for such a training is but
scantily appreciated. Only a very few of us are able to appraise the
real importance of music in the advancement of human civilization, nor
is this unusual, since most of us have but to go back but a very few
generations to encounter our blessed Puritan and Quaker ancestors to
whom all music, barring the lugubrious Psalm singing, was the
inspiration of the devil. The teachers, as has been said before, are
fully ready and more than anxious to give the kind of training required.
Very frequently parents are themselves to blame for the slender
_dilettante_ style of playing which their well-instructed children
present. They measure the needs of the concert hall by the dimensions of
the parlor. The teacher of the would-be professional pupil aspires to
produce a quantity of tone that will