laimed him at the early age of forty years.

* * * * *

There is a tendency to judge a work of art by its size. Thus the
sculptor who does a "heroic figure" is the man who looms large to the
average visitor at the art-gallery.

Chopin wrote no lengthy symphonies, oratorios or operas. His music is
poetry set to exquisite sounds. Poetry is an ecstasy of the spirit, and
ecstasies in their very nature are not sustained moods.

The poetic mood is transient. A composition by Chopin is a soul-ecstasy,
like unto the singing of a lark.

No other man but Chopin should have been allowed to set the songs of
Shelley to music. With such names as Shelley, Keats, Poe and Crane must
Chopin's name be linked.

In Chopin's music there is much loose texture; there are wide-meshed
chords, daring leaps and abrupt arpeggios. These have often been pointed
out as faults, but such harmonious discords are now properly valued, and
we see that Chopin's lapses all had meaning and purpose, in that they
impart a feeling--making their appeal to souls that have suffered--souls
that know.

More of Chopin's music is sold in America every year than was sold
altogether during the lifetime of the composer. His name and fame grow
with each year. Everywhere--wherever a piano is played--on concert
platform, in studio or private parlor, there you will find the work of
Frederic Chopin. That such a widespread distribution must have a potent
and powerful effect upon the race goes without argument, although the
furthest limit of that influence no man can mark. It is registered with
Infinity alone. And thus does that modest, mild and gentle revolutionist
Frederic Chopin live again in minds made better.

[Illustration: SCHUMANN]

ROBERT SCHUMANN

Beneath these flowers I dream, a silent chord. I can not wake my
own strings to music; but under the hands of those who comprehend
me, I become an eloquent friend. Wanderer, ere thou goest, try me!
The more trouble thou takest with me, the more lovely will be the
tones with which I shall reward thee.

--_Robert Schumann_

ROBERT SCHUMANN

That any man should ever write his thoughts for other men to read, seems
the very height of egoism.

Literature never dies, and so the person who writes constitutes himself
a rival of Shakespeare and seeks to lure us from Montaigne, Milton,
Emerson and Carlyle. To write nothing better than grammatical Eng