Next we should place regularity and perseverance. Without these the teacher can do nothing. If she works in the best spirit she will feel that, like David, she cannot offer to God of that which doth cost her nothing, and she will be ready to forego little pleasures in order that the practice may not be interfered with, or the evening of the week changed. This last is a most important point; as the lives of working people, from whose ranks most members of choirs are recruited, do not adapt themselves to change, they seldom receive in its integrity a hasty message sent round to put off, and of all things, a walk for nothing after a day’s work is to be avoided. Of course rules must be elastic and not unbending as iron, but experience shows that the above advice is really needful. Regularity in the teacher is sure to be imitated by the learners, and steady work must tell in the end. The next point should be firmness tempered with wisdom. The teacher must be supreme, or no choir will prosper. Infallible she cannot be while here below; but even so, one will must rule or anarchy will be the result. Twenty (or whatever number may compose the choir) views of doing the same thing cannot conduce to harmony, moral or musical, and this fact must be impressed. At the same time there are local prejudices and fancies in most places, which a clever tactful teacher will soon discover and understand, so as to know when she had better give way. Enough has been said to show that we do not consider the task of teaching a choir an easy one, nor will it always repay with success those who have given it much trouble. The teacher must sometimes find herself grappling with the effort of making the proverbial “sow’s ear into a silk purse.” She has impossible materials to weld, such as, _e.g._, excellent, but roaring basses, trebles possessing no high notes, tenors out of tune, and leaning to amalgamation with treble, altos none! What is she to do? Courage! Go on, do your best, teach, exhort, scold, coax, never lose hope, and if you get no credit, try not to mind. Man does not know, but God does, what work you do for His sake, only be sure that you are so doing it. If the music be really the unattainable “silk purse,” how much may be done in teaching the inharmonious little choir to phrase well, to throw out by judicious accent the sense of canticle and hymn, and so lead the congregation to think of the lesson it contains! How much zeal may be kindled by the teacher’s energy! How speedily the broad dialect peculiar to the place will disappear before a little good-natured chaff and imitation from one in whose lips it is seen, even by its votaries, to be ridiculous! How the ill-used letter “H” may be helped and restored with the advice of breathing over it.