heart when they
are continually being tortured by regret because God did not make
masters of them?

One is sad because he is not a master of poetry. He never sees A, his
golden-tongued friend, without a pang very like the envy of a
childless man for a happy father. But he has no suspicion that he is
partly responsible for A's poetic excellence. Another thinks her life
a mistake because the Master of all good workmen did not make her a
sculptor. Yet all the while she is lavishing unawares upon her brother
or son or husband the very stuff that art is made of. Others are
inconsolable because no fairy wand at their birth destined them for
men of original action, for discoverers in science, pianists,
statesmen, or actors; for painters, philosophers, inventors, or
architects of temples or of religions.

Now my task in this last chapter is a more delightful one than if I
were the usual solicitor of fiction, come to inform the
poor-but-honest newsboy that he is a royal duke. It is my privilege to
comfort many of the comfortless by revealing to them how and why they
are--or may be--masters of an art as indispensable as the arts which
they now regard so wistfully. I mean the art of master-making--the art
of being a master by proxy.

To be specific, let us single out one of the arts and see what it
means to master it by proxy. Suppose we consider the simple case of
executive music. In a book called "The Musical Amateur" I have tried
to prove (more fully than is here possible) that the reproduction of
music is a social act. It needs two: one to perform, one to
appreciate. Both are almost equally essential to a good performance.
The man who appreciates a musical phrase unconsciously imitates it
with almost imperceptible contractions of throat or lips. These
contractions represent an incipient singing or whistling. Motions
similar to these, and probably more fully developed, are made at the
same time by his mind and his spirit. The whole man actually feels his
way, physically and psychically, into the heart of the music. He is
turned into a sentient sounding-board which adds its own contribution
of emotion to the music and sends it back by wireless telegraphy to
the performer. When a violinist and a listener of the right sort meet
for musical purposes, this is what happens. The violinist happens to
be in the mood for playing. This means that he has feelings which
demand expression. These his bow releases. The music strikes the