On the other hand there are some who practise on a musical instrument for hours every day. Years roll by, but there seems to be no progress made, at least there is no appreciation of progress at the hands of other persons. Still, the musicians belonging to this class do not seem to be discouraged. They may grow old the while, but never relax in their aspirations. What for? Think you, perhaps, that all this one-pointedness, this expenditure of energy to attain to an ideal, will be lost when the man dies? Not so! Nothing is ever lost. Nature preserves everything. Every single effort leaves its imprint upon the soul in which the result finally inheres. When such a life has come to its end the people may say: "Poor musician! he labored all his lifetime and accomplished nothing!" But see! when a boy suddenly appears who at the age of eight years can play an instrument, surmounting the most difficult technique with great ease, almost as if he had known it before he commenced--what then? We begin to look around for the hereditary connexion; and here we see quite often that neither his parents nor cousins or any relations have or had any trace of such talent. How comes it then that the prodigy can do this without having to learn it like other people? May it not be that he has really learned it at some time, _in another life_ and stored it away in his soul, and now, he simply manifests most naturally what is his own? Truly, artists are not made out of nothing. They are made out of all these things that they previously, diligently and persistently, labored for. Every bit of it, every feeling, every emotion, and every touch of the heart, of the head, and of the hand that they now manifest is of their own making, without any miracle or extraneous grace. Thus is Genius for music cultivated. GLIMPSES OF SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY: by Per Fernholm, M. E., Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm) When the fragments still left of Scandinavian mythology, scattered in the Icelandic sagas and tales, are carefully put together, they give a grand picture of the history of Earth and Man from the first dawn of the present great Day of evolution. Clear and scientific in the broad outlines, they will some day surely prove a gold-mine of useful knowledge for future researches into the past. Nor do they stop with the history of the past and its blending with the present, but go farther and picture the destruction of life as we know it in a purifying fire, and show how a new earth arises from the sea, whereon a new and lasting Golden Age will be enjoyed by Gods and men. When Earth had assumed its shape and was ready to receive living beings, the Creative Wisdom permeated the elements and in the ensuing fermentation the cow Audumla appeared. Licking the salt rocks she liberated from the life-germs of the various elements a great and beautiful being endowed with a divine spirit. He became the father of the Gods who rule and protect the world of Man in this cycle.