rganisation, due to the zeal of the Director of Education, existed for
the purpose of introducing the joys of Music to the children of the
various elementary schools. Concerts of different types were given for
their benefit in their own schoolrooms in the evenings, and as
admittance could not be given to all it was considered a privilege to be
able to attend. The pathos stills echoes in mind when we recall how some
of these children, boys and girls, would trudge out in the wet
evenings, often ill-nourished and insufficiently clad, to taste the joys
of music. Never was there any question of attention, for they were
eagerness personified, and it seemed as if they found there something
that their souls had missed. Too little do we realise that food and
clothing do not suffice us, young or old. We cannot live by bread alone:
our stomachs may be full and our souls empty. The spiritual side of our
nature demands sustenance and, as in the case of these hungry and often
wet little school children, it is the province of Music to minister to
that need. "A love of music is worth any amount of five-finger
exercises, and the capacity to enjoy a Symphony is beyond all
examination certificates."[2]

[Note 2: "Everyman and his Music." Scholes.]

A brass band will fill a whole street with glamour, and the normal
person finds it quite impossible to be out of step with the rhythm of
the march. Watch the way in which, as the Pied Piper of Hamelin drew the
children after him, the band draws the elders to the window and the
children to the street: the appeal is never in vain. Marching in time
with the music tired feet forget their weariness, and new strength comes
from the reserves of the greater self, liberated at the unspoken appeal
of melody and rhythm. The Salvation Army with its sometimes quite
excellent brass bands ever attracts a crowd of interested listeners.
Their enthusiasm is quite as real as, and perhaps even more real than,
that of a fashionable audience in the Queen's Hall: more real, because
if the Salvation Army fails to please it is always possible to walk
away. If a person is bored at the Queen's Hall a lack of moral courage
will probably detain him to the end of the performance. There is magic
in a bugle call, there are whole volumes of countryside history in a
posthorn's blast as the four-horse coach swings past. The beat of the
drum and the shrill pipe of the fifes carry a "come-along" atmosphere
with them, and if we fa