This idea was started in the early part of this century in books on the violin, professing to tell the reader all about it or nearly so, and he had only to go, get the stuff, and make Stradivari violins, in fact with the addition of the amount of scientific knowledge of the subject peculiar to modern imitators, he would make "old Strad" "take a back seat." This has been often tried by would-be "Strads," "Guarneris," or "Bergonzis," and full of specious promises that if you will but purchase their wares you be rewarded for your pains by being possessor of everything good that they could endow the instrument with. Keep it, persevere, and the precious qualities will come; some were daring enough to assert that they were already there, if even your mental vision was so obtuse as not to perceive it, absurd prejudice was the cause of this they said, oblivious to the fact that the best musicians of Stradivari's time used the violins fresh from the atelier of the master perfectly new, expressing their unbounded admiration for their beautiful acoustic properties or "pleasurable sounds." Is the like said of new violins at the present time? These imitators, some of them might be with perfect truth termed forgers, are legion, as in the case of everything that is of a high standard of excellence and which makes acquisition desirable. These artificers had their day, so far as forcing their imitations upon the credulous and unwary could be accomplished, and others have replaced them, yet there aloft still sits the grand master upon his high eminence, unapproached, with the whole world clamouring and struggling for the possession of what in the earnestness of his purpose was only his everyday work. Before leaving the imitators and forgers, for they are distinct one from the other, the first simply taken being honest, the other not, it may be as well to refer as briefly as possible to the general aspect as afforded by such specimens of Stradivari's art that remain with us after fairly constant usage during the generations that have passed since his decease. Most connoisseurs and dealers are well acquainted with the appearance of a "Strad" of fine model, work and varnish that has done its duty in former times, and is yet able and willing to answer all requirements of the present day and many to come. If the instrument has not been hidden and forgotten in the cabinet of some deceased collector, but has been handed down from one player to another, kept in healthy exercise, not meddled with, muddled, and maddened by the numerous would-be improvers, bridge regulators, sound post agitators and varnish vivifiers, then--it will probably present an appearance of what is called handsome wear, or as a writer has termed it, "adorned, not injured, by a century's fair wear."