The national ear for music, like the national eye for painting and sculpture, has made marvelous progress in fifty years.

The singing school has gone to the wall along with the volunteer choir and the notion that every boy and girl can and ought to sing.

Once in several whiles you find a "music-mad family," of which every member plays upon some instrument and studies music with expensive professors.

Or one child displays what relatives rate as musical genius, and is educated to the full extent of the parent's ability.

This done, the proficient becomes, in his or her own opinion, a privileged prodigy.