Often, however, the evolution seems to progress by sheer accident. This is the way the accident is likely to happen. Jones is buying records for the family phonograph. One may judge of his particular stage of musical evolution by his purchases, which are: "Meet me in St. Louis, Louis," "Dance of the Honey Bells," "Hello Central, Give me Heaven," "Fashion Plate March," and "I Know that I'll be Happy when I Die." He also notices in the catalogue a piece called "Tannhaeuser March," and, after some hesitation, buys this as well, because the name sounds so much like his favorite brand of beer that he suspects it to be music of a convivial nature--a medley of drinking-songs, perhaps. But that evening in the parlor it does not seem much like beer. When the Mephisto Military Band strikes it up--far from seeming in the least alcoholic, it exhilarates nobody. So Jones inters it in the darkest corner of the music-cabinet. And the family devote themselves to the cake-walks and comic medleys, the fandangoes and tangos, the xylophone solos, the shakedowns and break-downs and the rags and tatters of their collection until they have thoroughly exhausted the delights thereof. Then, having had time to forget somewhat the flatness of "Tannhaeuser," and for want of anything better to do, they take out the despised record, dust it, and insert it into the machine. But this time, curiously enough, the thing does not sound quite so flat. After repeated playings, it even begins to rival the "Fashion Plate March" in its appeal. And it keeps on growing in grace until within a year the "Fashion Plate March" is as obsolete as fashion plates have a habit of growing within a year, while "Tannhaeuser" has won the distinction of being the best-wearing record in the cabinet. Then it begins to occur to the Jones family that there must be two kinds of musical food: candy and staples. Candy, like the "Fashion Plate March," tastes wonderfully sweet to the unsophisticated palate as it goes down; but it is easy to take too much. And the cheaper the candy, the swifter the consequent revulsion of feeling. As for the staples, there is nothing very piquant about their flavor; but if they are of first quality, and if one keeps his appetite healthy, one seems to enjoy them more and more and to thrive on them three times a day. Accordingly, Jones is commissioned, when next he visits the music-store, to get a few more records like "Tannhaeuser." On this occasion, he may even be rash enough to experiment with a Schubert march, or a Weber overture, or one of the more popular movements of a Beethoven sonata. And so the train of evolution will rush onward, bearing the Joneses with it until fashion-plate marches are things of the misty, backward horizon, and the family has, by little and little, come to know and love the whole blessed field of classical music. And they have found that the word "classical" is not a synonym for dry-rot, but that it simply means the music that wears best.