Amateurs when on the stage frequently rearrange a tie or smooth back a stray curl, etc.; this is but a form of nervousness and looks bad. Finish your toilet at home. For ease and grace take dancing lessons. The graduate from dancing and dramatic schools never appear ill at ease before company. WHAT AND HOW TO PRACTICE. It is not so much =what=, but =how= you practice. The average beginner takes up his practice in an aimless sort of way. Every action should have some result in view. After taking your lesson, if you find you are not positive as to the proper course to be pursued at home, you must ask your teacher the questions necessary to put you on the right path. You should have all your work laid out for you and go about it in a systematic manner. Only in this way can you hope to achieve any degree of success. A beginner should not practice much more than five minutes at a time on each construction, neither would much less than that be sufficient to accustom that set of muscles to that one construction. Never practice your limit tones at either end of your range as much as you do your middle register. What I mean by middle register is low enough to produce chest and high enough to produce head tones. If you can produce a fine middle register, the high tones will naturally follow in time. Melba says, "On days when my high tones do not come easily in practice, I do not sing them." Do not show or cover your teeth because you have seen some singers do so; individual construction differs. Pronounce your words naturally and distinctly, never forgetting the consonants at the end of the words. Don't think because you are singing from a Marchesi book that you are studying her method. You are getting the method of the teacher with whom you are studying. There are but two ways of singing--"right" and "wrong"--and it makes little difference from what instruction book you are taking your lesson, they are all good and all constructed on the same principles. The main thing is knowing =what= you are trying to do. Many pupils who are poor readers worry through several exercise books, and at the end of that time have only memorized the notes and made no progress whatever on the main point--tone. The pupil should learn to use the ear, mind and memory, and a great deal of time would be gained in tone placing which should be taken up before using an exercise book. If you are not a sight reader, take up this study at once, preferably in class work, as it is absolutely necessary that you should be able to read music at sight.