While a thoughtful wife and mother is busied with the affairs of home, she is never done with her intellectual education, for she realizes early in her career that a mother loses half her influence with her children when she ceases to be their intellectual superior.
Women are far more observant of little things than men, and the greatest among them have marvelous powers of observation. It is this power that made Mrs. Gladstone and Mrs. Disraeli the sturdy helpmates they were to their husbands in all their trying cares of government. It is said of Gladstone that it was not unusual for him to adjourn a Cabinet meeting through a desire "to consult with Catherine." Had there not been large power of observation, we should never have had the works of George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austin, Helen Hunt, and all the other notable women creators of fiction. Charlotte Cushman was the greatest actress America has ever produced because her observation was so close that not the smallest detail of the character she played escaped her or was neglected. The beautifying of Athens owes its inception to Aspasia rather than to Pericles.
II
MUSICAL CULTURE
Of all the arts, none is more difficult to define than music. No two persons seem to agree as to what it is, and a harsh sound to one is often sweet music to another. When music is controlled by those who use carefully their powers of observation, it will be vastly more useful to mankind. The need of music in the advancement of humanity it too apparent to admit of discussion. From the Greek instrument with one string down to the wonderful pipe-organ, music has been intensely attractive and marvelously helpful, and for the good of the human family.
No art or science needs more to be developed to-day than that of music. Its influence on soul and body has been noticed and advanced by some of the greatest thinkers of ancient and modern times, therefore it is not necessary to discuss the supreme need for real music to bring into harmony motives and movements for good. When we duly consider the subject of music, and ask where we shall find the great musicians who are to-day so much in demand, we feel that many so-called schools of music are often more misleading than instructive, and that they follow fashions that are far more unreasonable than the fashions of dress.
The art of music needs philosophic study, and it should be begun with a far better understanding of the many causes which contribute to its composition. The singing of birds is literally one of the most discordant expressions of sound. Indeed, the tones of the nightingale and the meadow-lark are only shrill whistles when they are considered with reference only to the tones of their voice, yet they furnish the ideal of some of the richest music to which the ear has ever listened, being one part of the delicate orchestra of nature. The lowing of the cow, the bellow of the bull, the bark of an angry dog echoing among the hills at eventide, combined with so many other different sounds and impressions, has become enticingly sweet to the pensive listener. The insect-choir of night has as much of the calming and refining influences as the bird-choir of the morning.
Real music requires not only that the tones should be clear and resonant, but that they should be uttered amid harmonious surroundings. "Dixie" and "Yankee Doodle," sung with a banjo accompaniment on a lawn in the evening, surrounded by gay companions, may be the most delightful music, which will start the blood coursing or rest the disturbed mind, but it would not be called music if sung at a funeral. "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" is glorious music when it is sung in a great cathedral, with echoes from its shadowy arches and the dim light of its stained-glass windows. But the same solo would be in awful discord with a ballroom jig.