g is bettered. Singers as a rule are notoriously healthy and
often very long lived. The new movement for community singing in the
open air is a magnificent one. Let everybody sing!

A great singing teacher with a reputation as big as Napoleon's or George
Washington's is not needed. There are thousands and thousands of unknown
teachers who are most excellent. Often the advice or the instruction is
very much the same. What difference does it make whether I buy Castile
soap in a huge Broadway store or a little country store, if the soap is
the same? Many people hesitate to study because they can not study with
a great teacher. Nonsense! Pick out some sensible, well-drilled teacher
and then use your own good judgment to guide yourself. Remember that
Schumann-Heink did not study with a world-famed teacher. Whoever hears
of Marietta von Leclair in these days? Yet I do not think that I could
have done any more with my voice if I had had every famous teacher from
Niccolo Antonio Porpora down to the present day. The individual singer
must have ideals, and then leave nothing undone to attain those ideals.
One of my ideals was to be able to sing pianissimo with the kind of
resonance that makes it carry up to the farthest gallery. That is one of
the most difficult things I had to learn, and I attained it only after
years of faithful practice.

THE SINGER'S DAILY ROUTINE

To keep the voice in prime condition the singer's first consideration is
physical and mental health. If the body or the mind is over-taxed
singing becomes an impossibility. It is amazing what the healthy body
and the busy mind can really stand. I take but three weeks' vacation
during the year and find that I am a great deal better for it. Long
terms of enforced indolence do not mean rest. The real artist is
happiest when at work, and I want to work. Fortunately I am never at
loss for opportunity. The ambitious vocal student can benefit as much by
studying a good book on hygiene or the conservation of the health as
from a book on the art of singing.

First of all comes diet. Americans as a rule eat far too much. Why do
some of the good churchgoing people raise such an incessant row about
over-drinking when they constantly injure themselves quite as much by
over-eating? What difference does it make whether you ruin your stomach,
liver or kidneys by too much alcohol or too much roast beef? One vice is
as bad as another. The singer must live upon a light diet. A h