_Song_, above all, must be national; it must be in harmony with the _genius_ of a nation to attain its highest development. It is too closely allied to a nation's speech to be separated therefrom without doing violence to both its music and its meaning. The music and the words _must go together_; their union is as indispensable as it is indissoluble. While we have excellent vocal material in this country, it lacks the proper food for its nourishment. There is no want of poetic compositions. No nation has their superior, or has them in greater abundance. We have the words and the singers; but there is a woful lack of a higher class of compositions for singing. The latter are not at all commensurate with the abundance and the superiority of the talent that is awaiting their appearance. With compositions on a par with its vocal talent, this nation might rank first among nations in the art of singing. It must stand on its own footing. It must sing its own songs and must be taught by its own teachers. This dictum may provoke indignation in "foreign" vocal teachers. Though I regret the possible consequences to them, this cannot be helped. Science is synonymous with knowledge, and knowledge with truth, and "the truth must be told if the heavens should fall." BREATHING All of the preceding, in a manner, may be said to be a preliminary argument for the great truth I claim to have discovered, namely, that _in the sphere of the trunk of our body the material part of our nature is represented by the hemisphere of the abdomen, its immaterial part by that of the thorax; that in the sphere of the head a similar division obtains, in conformity with which it is also divided into hemispheres representing material and immaterial issues; and that every faculty, and the exercise thereof, have their being in a dual action, in close succession, emanating from these hemispheres._ The first proposition to be proven was that we breathe through the œsophagus, conjointly with the trachea. If all I have said in the preceding has not already convinced the reader of the truth of this statement, I trust the following experiments will thoroughly convince him thereof. These experiments will also furnish additional proof of the fact that English and German modes of respiration are of an inverse order. Not the slightest fear need be entertained as to the result of these experiments. I have made the same, and others of a similar nature, over and over again, without being in the least discomfited thereby; and I may add that to the fact of having been entirely divested of fear, I largely owe my success in all these undertakings.