In what follows I shall try to show how we may escape from the conditions in which we now too complacently rest. The material for the change is abundant, for there is in every community much more love of music than ever appears; the means are simple and inexpensive, for only a few dollars worth of good music are needed, with a room in which to practice, a piano and a leader. Let us make a start toward a sincere and intimate understanding of music through making it ourselves. Let us give up criticism of other people and begin to construct. Then shall we learn to see music as it is and to value it accordingly. II. OUR MUSICAL ACTIVITIES As a preliminary to this discussion it will be well to look at the present status of music among us, and to see how near we come to this necessary intimacy with the art. In any small American community the first impression one gets about music is that it is useful to fill up gaps. At the theater, before public meetings, at social affairs of one sort or another, music is performed to a ceaseless hum of conversation or while people are entering and leaving. The art becomes, in consequence, like the cracking of the whip before the team starts, or like the perfunctory speeches and gestures of social amenities; it is nothing in itself, and falls in our estimation accordingly. It is true that, at such times, only trivial music is usually played, but this only makes the situation worse, because, after all, it passes as music. A bad piece of music at the theater or while one is dining in a restaurant is merely an annoyance; a good piece beats its head against a flood of conversation, tinkling glasses and other disturbances, and is lost; one feels as though its composer had been insulted. All this incidental music must be partly due to the decline in conversation. We are relieved of all responsibility save an occasional “yes” or “no” shouted above the din. Real musical activity in the average small community is limited to a very small number of its inhabitants. Only a few people sing; a much smaller number play some musical instrument. There are, here and there, choirs made up of volunteer singers, but the spirit that animated the old choirs--the spirit which Hardy has celebrated so lovingly in “Under the Greenwood Tree”--has disappeared. Hymn-singing in church is often distressingly bad, and with good reason, since the composers of modern hymn tunes seldom take into consideration the needs and wishes of congregations. Church music has been delegated by us to paid singers, and our church music becomes a thinly disguised concert, or, when the really abominable vocal quartette supplies the music, a concert outright.