One day a manufacturer took me thru his factory where he makes fiddles. Not violins—fiddles.
A violin is only a fiddle with a college education.
I have had the feeling ever since that you and I come into this world like the fiddle comes from the factory. We have a body and a neck. That is about all there is either to us or to the fiddle. We are empty. We have no strings. We have no bow—yet!
When the human fiddles are about six years old they go into the primary schools and up thru the grammar grades, and get the first string—the little E string. The trouble is so many of these human fiddles think they are an orchestra right away. They want to quit school and go fiddling thru life on this one string!
We must show these little fiddles they must go back into school and go up thru all the departments and institutions necessary to give them the full complement of strings for their life symphonies.
After all this there comes the commencement, and the violin comes forth with the E, A, D and G strings all in place. Educated now? Why is a violin? To wear strings? Gussie got that far and gave a lot of discord. The violin is to give music.
So there is much yet to do after getting the strings. All the book and college can do is to give the strings—the tools. After that the violin must go into the great tuning school of life. Here the pegs are turned and the strings are put in tune. The music is the knowing. Learning is tuning.
You do not know what you have memorized, you know what you have vitalized, what you have written in the book of experience.
Gussie says, "I have read it in a book." Bill Whackem says, "I know!"