"O, yes, I understand," said Lilli Aim. Then stabbing him she added, "since you dropped The Perfect Institute, and dropped the idea Which stresses training muscles of the tongue, And all that thing, be fair and shoulder half The failure of poor Elenor Murray on Your system's failure. For I chanced to know The girl myself. She started work with me, And I am sure that if I had been able-- With time enough I could have done it too-- To rid her mind of muscles and to fix The thought alone of music in her mind, She would have sung. Now listen, Ludwig Haibt, You've come around to see that song's the thing. I take a pupil and I say to her: The mind must fix itself on music, say I would make song, pure tones and beautiful; That comes from spirit, from the Plato rapture, Which gets the idea. It is well to know Some physiology, I grant, to know When, how to move the vocal organs, feel How they are moving, through the ear to place These organs in relation, and to know The soft palate is drawn against the hard; The tongue can take positions numerous, Can be used at the root, a throaty voice; Or with the tip, produce expressiveness. But what must we avoid?--rigidity. And if that girl was over-zealous, then So much the more her teaching should have kept Mind off the larynx and the tongue, and fixed Upon the spiritual matters, so to give The snake-like power of loosening, contracting The muscles used for singing. Ludwig Haibt, I can forgive your system, since abandoned, I can't forgive your words to-day who say This woman failed for trying over much, When I know that your system made her throw An energy truly wonderful on muscles; And when I think of your book where you said: The singing voice is the result, observe Of physical conditions, like the strings Or tubes of brass. While granting that it's well To know the art of tuning up the strings, And how to place them; after all the art Of tuning and of placing comes from mind, The idea, and the art of making song Is just the breathing of the perfect spirit Upon the strings. The throat is but the leaves, Let them be flexible, the mouth's the flower, The tone the perfume. And your olden way Of harping on the larynx--well, since you Turned from it, I'm ungenerous perhaps To scold you thus to-day. But this I say, Let us be frank as teachers: Take the fetich Of breathing and see how you cripple talent, Or take that matter of the laryngyscope, Whereby you photograph a singer's throat, Caruso's, Galli Curci's at the moment Of greatest beauty in song, and thus preserve In photographs before you how the muscles Looked and were placed that moment. Then attempt To get the like effect by placing them In similar fashion. Oh, you know, Herr Ludwig, These fetiches go by. One thing remains: The idea in the soul of beauty, music, The hope to give it forth.