The best plan yet evolved is that every school have its own small but standard, well-selected library of records, which may be at hand at all times, to include marches, folk dances, songs, etc. This is then augmented by supplementary material sent in the circulating boxes. A central library, kept in the Board of Education offices, with regulation loan privileges to the schools, is another way of increasing the school's supply.

The director in charge should adapt one of these suggested plans for record equipment to the needs and possibilities of his or her own city.

There are almost as many ways of teaching appreciation as there are people teaching it, and owing to the newness of the subject, the scope of material available, and the dissimilarity of personalities, the presentation of music appreciation may never be reduced to an absolute science. But there are certain fundamental principles to which we must adhere, and in spite of all allowances for the elusiveness of our subject and breadth of our possibilities, there are certain definite ends to achieve and mistakes to avoid.

In the first place, it should be clearly understood that the beginning and the end of music appreciation for little children is that the musical and the so-called unmusical alike shall experience and love MUSIC ITSELF.

If one is enjoying the odor of a beautiful rose, his enjoyment is not increased because someone says the rose is fragrant. Just so, it is of paramount importance that the teacher should not separate the child from the music by too much talk. Let the music itself talk.

There are many legitimate ways of stimulating and leading a child's imagination, of heightening his eagerness for and enjoyment of music through stories and questions, but it would be unwholesome to train him to expect that

there must always be an exciting story, or that he is always to do something or imagine definite things. It is just as necessary that he should sometimes have practice in quiet enjoyment, and that concert etiquette be observed, though the miniature concert number be but one minute in length and the singer "Mother Goose."

A cramming of facts about music is often confused with music appreciation. One might know that Beethoven was afflicted with deafness, and Schubert died at the age of thirty-three; in short, one might memorize a Grove's Dictionary, if necessary, without increasing his appreciation of a symphony, or learning to love the more an art song.

Very little information need be given at this time, and guidance should be as much as possible in the direction of skillful questioning, intended to arouse the pupil's own thought power.

The children's response will be a safe test as to the correctness of one's methods and material. If they are attracted and held in a happy, orderly enjoyment, the teacher may know she is started on the road that leads to intelligent appreciation of music.

In response to literally thousands of requests, the Victor Educational Department offers this definite plan for appreciation work in the home and primary grades.

It should be the duty of the person in charge of the appreciation work for city or building to hold teachers' meetings to study the plan together; to assist teachers who need help in understanding and teaching the plan, and to give model lessons when necessary.

After thoroughly testing all the details of this plan, we feel absolutely sure that the well-suited, attractive material will itself bring instant and eager response from the children and teachers alike.

BEGINNING CULTURAL HEARING

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases: it will never
Pass into nothingness: but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health and
quiet breathing.

-KEATS

AN has many rights and blessings and none greater than his inborn love of the beautiful. In the little child this birthright is fresh and alive, and it is imperative that we should nurture and tend this precious impulse while we may, that he may not reach maturity to find it stunted and dwarfed through rounds of unrelieved toil and years of disuse.

The little child turns to the beautiful as a tender plant to the sunlight, and a very young child is susceptible to the sound of beautiful music. His ear is alert and registers conceptions very early.

A child hears language from his birth. It is poured over him many, many months with no expectation that he shall use it immediately, and even before any particular words catch his attention. By constant repetitions he soon understands and attempts to reproduce this spoken language, and has a vocabulary of many words long before he begins the definite study of reading and spelling them.

Just so, if music be a language, a child should hear, love, and understand its tone message long before he is able to spell out its "words" with voice or fingers. This experience with simple, beautiful music should surround the child at home, but the singing of good songs in the home

seems to be a lost art, if we ever possessed it, and very few may have it in early baby days. The situation demands that this lack be supplied in the kindergarten and early primary grades.

Countless times it has beer said that experience should precede formal instruction, but how many, many times over we see poor little children struggling to master the printed symbols of the music language, which they have never heard.

One groans to think of the aggregate tons of sheet music that have been worn to tatters, of the miles of scales, and the years of practice wasted without any real music experience, appreciation, or ambition.

Time was when it was impossible to experience music, except for the few who were fortunate enough to have pianos or organs and someone to play them; but that time is past. It is just as easy to present the literature of the world's best music, as it is its poetry.

In literary courses it is the LITERATURE ITSELF that counts and reading courses are preceded with much hearing of the language. We should also surround children with the good music, which is their heritage, that they may have the love of music as a foundation on which to build.

Modern methods of rearing children have made lullabies almost obsolete. Lullabies are the first songs a child should hear, and the Victor educational material includes many of the oldest and most beautiful of the world's lullabies, especially made for little children, "lest we forget."

These and many other simple and direct melodies have been "sung" with sympathetic solo instrument—the violin, viola, clarinet, celesta, etc.-so that children may