The march of civilization follows a simple trail, well defined beyond dispute. Viewed in retrospect it begins in a hazy thread stretching from Assyria into Egypt, from Egypt into Greece, from Greece to Rome--widening throughout Italy and Spain, then centering in Venice, and tracing clear and deep to Amsterdam--widening again into Germany and across to England, thence carried in "Mayflowers" to America. That remark of Charles Dudley Warner, once near neighbor to Mark Twain, that there is no culture west of Buffalo, was indelicate if not unkind; and residents of Omaha aver that it is open to argument. But the fact stands beyond cavil that what art we possess is traceable to our masters, the Dutch. It must be admitted that the art of printing was first practised at Mayence on the Rhine, leaving the Chinese out of the equation; but it had to travel around down through Italy before it reached perfection. And its universality and usefulness were not fully developed until it had swung around to Holland and was given by the Dutch back to Germany and the world. And as with printing, so with music. Germany has specialized on music. She has succeeded, but it is because Holland gave her lessons. * * * * * During the fore part of the Seventeenth Century, there lived in Antwerp, Ludvig van Biethofen, grandfather of the genius known as Beethoven. A life-size portrait of him can be seen in the Plantin Musee, and if you did not know that the picture was painted before Beethoven was born, you would say at once, "Beethoven!" There is a look of stern endurance, as if the artist had admired Rembrandt's "Burgomaster" a little too well, yet that sturdiness belonged to the Master, too; and there are the abstracted far-away look, the touch of proud melancholy, and the becoming unkemptness that we know so well. The child is grandfather to the man. Beethoven bore slight resemblance to his immediate parents, but in his talent, habits and all of his mental traits, he closely resembled this sturdy Dutchman who composed, sang, led the military band, and played the organ at the Church of Saint Jacques in Antwerp. Being ambitious, Ludvig van Biethofen, while yet a young man, moved to Bonn, the home of Clement Augustus, Archbishop-Elector of Cologne. The chief business of elector was, in case of necessity, to elect a King. America borrowed the elector idea from Germany. But our "electoral college" is a degenerate political appendicle that is continued, because, in borrowing plans of government, we took good and bad alike, not knowing there was a difference. The elector scheme in the United States is occasionally valuable for defeating the will of the people in case of a popular majority.