There had been at one time, he said, an eminent vocalist worshipped by the Parisian public. His voice was beautiful in quality, faultless in intonation, and absolutely steady in emission. At last, however, he began to grow old. With increasing years the voice commenced to shake. But he was a great artist. Realising that the tremolo was a fault, but one which could not then be avoided, he brought his mind to bear upon the problem before him. As a result, he adopted a style of song in which he had to display intense emotion throughout. Since in life the voice trembles at such moments, he was able to hide his failing in this way by a quality of voice which appeared natural to the situation. The Parisians did not grasp the workings of his brain, and the clever way in which he had hidden his fault. They only heard that in every song which he sang his voice trembled. At once, therefore, they concluded that if so fine an effect could be obtained, it was evidently something to be imitated. Hence the singers deliberately began to cultivate a tremolo. The custom grew and grew until it became almost a canon in French singing. The maestro told another story to illustrate the strange way in which effects were sometimes produced by the old vocalists. A certain artist was singing Secchi's "Lungi dal caro." Something in his voice gripped the audience from the first bar. There was an indefinable quality which they had never experienced before, something which thrilled and stirred them with an inexpressible weirdness, something which almost made the blood run cold. When the music ceased, every one drew a deep breath and remained silent for a few moments. Then came a burst of rapturous applause. Later on, a fellow musician went up to the singer, congratulated him, and then said, "Tell me how you were able to produce that effect upon your audience." "Did you not hear? No? Then I will tell you how I did it. Throughout the music I sang the least shade flat. The result you observed." And now a few words as to Manuel Garcia's Method of Teaching. He always impressed on singers and teachers alike that the Art of Singing was not voice-_production_, a term which he loathed, but guidance in voice-_emission_. His Method may be perhaps summed up in the doctrine that it was _not_ a method--in the sense that he had no hard and fast rules,--his object always being to make each pupil sing in the way most natural and involving the least effort. He was careful to impress on one the fact that any visible effort took away from the charm of the singer. If one gave too free play to the lungs, and sang beyond oneself, he would remark, "You must not forget the advice my father gave me: 'Do not let anybody see the bottom of your purse; never spend all you possess, nor have it noticed that you are at your last resource.'"