Many people possess quite good voices until they learn singing. Their natural aptitude, which so largely depends upon the models they may have had for imitation in the earliest days, is possibly quite excellent. Then comes the Voice Specialist on the scene with his pet theories for improving upon Nature, and he gets busy. He may have his ideas upon "breaks," registers, and a thousand other details. Perhaps he has written a book on the way in which Nature has made a botch of the voice, creating it in a number of sections like a fishing rod, specially to provide an interesting and lucrative profession for the voice trainer. On the other hand he may be wise enough to thank Heaven when he finds a good natural voice, and leave it alone. Voices when naturally used have beauty, ease, compass, and an even tone without break throughout: this, we assert, in spite of the fact that many a famous contralto possesses apparently two voices, so marked is the break. There is a technical alteration of the working of the vocal chords at a certain pitch, but with a rightly-used voice this is automatic and unfelt: the whole body is full of such wonderful adjustments. To be called upon to deal consciously with such details is generally proof that they have gone wrong. Your attention to your digestion is enforced by dyspepsia: nobody notices a perfectly acting digestion. Some voices are expressive and carry emotion easily, while others are hard and inelastic. Some correspondence in the temperament will nearly always be found. Therefore the teacher who works at the voice (which is a means of expression of the temperament) without touching the inner characteristics, is like the man who tries to make an ill-regulated clock keep time by altering the hands. Lack of tone colour is not to be cured by cultivating a number of different sizes and shapes for the mouth and a selection of assorted smiles for the features. If a person feels sad, he will talk sadly. Carrying the same principle into song, we find that a voice naturally shows the timbre appropriate to the mood. Therefore in order to ensure proper tone colour the prime requisite is imagination and the ability vividly to call up and experience the various emotions. It will be evident that we are endeavouring to impart into vocal work precisely those same principles which we assert to be fundamental to the whole of music, namely--the importance of the idea as behind, distinct from, and manifested through, the technical means. The vocal machinery must necessarily be in first-class order, but the influence of the mind upon the body is so intimate and so extraordinary that even technical acquirement hangs to no small extent upon mental working.