Nobody cares to tune a fiddle for four years; but, if he has the opportunity to play a tune, he will gladly keep the fiddle tuned. This fact has been shown on a large scale as a result of the contest plans. Not only have the final local, district, and state contests become goals, but every daily practice has gained an objective and is a topic for social conversation. The contests have made each participant critical of his own performance and the performance of the group and have also made each ambitious for improvement. They have raised standards of selection in musical material. They have resulted in the giving of higher musical education to large numbers of gifted persons whose talents would not otherwise have come to the serious attention of parents or educational interests. The methods of judging these contests have been greatly improved in the direction of offering encouragement where encouragement is due without discouraging more modest attainments where they are indicated. Educators used to think that football was the only thing that would arouse enthusiastic support in the field of avocational activities for youth; but, as I have witnessed the attitude of high-school pupils in training for musical contests, heard reports of the attitudes of the parents and the backers, and watched the culmination of enthusiasm at the annual contest, I can say that there can be, for youth, as substantial enthusiasm in contests of music as there is in football. In other words, the youth of the state have entered into music in the spirit of play, with determination to train well, play hard, and win if possible. Enthusiasms for a center of interest in public and in private have been found in this music. _The hearing of music._ Within the past forty years, also, America has for the first time begun to hear music, good, bad, and indifferent. When the first phonograph came to our city, the host at an evening reception furnished music in a mysterious way. He had installed the phonograph in a niche curtained off in the hallway so that the direction from which the sound emerged was difficult to detect. He played three or four songs by a male quartet, which were richly applauded by his audience on the supposition that he had stationed a male quartet somewhere in the house. Music had come into the social group in a mysterious way.