Our Girls Part 15

My mother taught me, long ago, the great moral superiority of woman.

She taught me that most of the good and pure in this world comes from woman.

So far from thinking that man is an angel, and woman a nothing, and a bad nothing, the strongest article in my religious creed is, that when woman has been redeemed from the shilly-shally, lace, ribbon, and feather life, into which she has so unhappily drifted,--when woman shall be restored to herself, she will be strong enough in soul to take us men in her arms, and carry us to heaven.

I beg you will not suppose that, in my criticisms upon woman, I am prompted by the belief that she needs special exhortation on her own account. I appeal to her on account of us all, believing that the most direct and effective way to redeem the race, is to induce woman to lay aside every weight and the special sins that so beset her, and to run the race with the highest womanly heroism.

PIANO MUSIC.

Nothing so constantly troubled and pained me during the progress of the school at Lexington, as the strange pa.s.sion for the piano. Of the one hundred and forty girls present during the third year, I cannot recall more than three or four who possessed any decided musical capacity, while nearly a hundred studied music. Fifteen pianos were going constantly.

Take any one of sixty or seventy who were studying music, simply because it was fashionable, and consider the waste. One hundred and fifty to three hundred dollars a year for instruction, with two to five hours' exhaustive daily practice. I cannot bear to think that this foolish waste, and worse than waste, was going on for years, in an inst.i.tution under my management. But there are influences at work stronger than the will of the teachers. Those influences come from established prejudices.

Although the money and time given to the piano, among a large proportion of the girls in our school, was worse than wasted, I soon found that three out of four of them would refuse to enter the school, or remain in it, if they were urged not to study music.

After a young woman has studied music for five years, and has twisted her spine all out of shape in practicing upon the piano, she marries, plays a little on the splendid "Grand" which "Dear Aunt"

gives her as a wedding present, and then drops it forever. If there is decided talent, she may continue; but I speak of the results as I have seen them.

IMPORTANCE OF VOCAL MUSIC.

If the voice be cultivated, and the piano used as an accompaniment, the music in a girl's education would prove ten-fold more valuable.

Indeed, vocal music might prove, with many girls, the most valuable part of education. It is more likely to be continued, because of the greater pleasure it affords; while social singing serves more than any other influence to bind the inmates of a home together. As a source of general health, it stands unrivalled.

In this country of consumptives, it is especially valuable in fortifying the pulmonary apparatus.

Let us, by every means, foster social singing. Its influence is, in many ways, most precious. How interesting the group of sisters and brothers gathered about the piano, and how blessed the home where the evening is welcomed by family song.

Contrast this with the average mechanical execution of cla.s.sical music, by one of the girls, or with the fashionable operatic singing by one of them.

And just here I wish to speak of a fashion which should be deprecated. It is another piece of that growing vice, which would remove music from the social sphere, and make it, like some peculiarity of dress, a mere show. Suppose we have singing. Instead of four persons performing the several parts of some rich melody, Miss Arabella is invited to "give us that exquisite Aria," and we all sit by, and wonder at her execution.

The great service of music is one of the heart, and not of the head.

There are departments of music, there are possibilities in this divinest of the arts, which appeal to the subtlest appreciations of the intellect, and the most exalted conceptions of the imagination; but still it is true that the greatest service which music renders to man is in the social sphere, is one of the heart When our voices blend, our hearts will not long be kept asunder.

The whole tendency of the times is to deprive music of this, its most precious influence. Indeed, so far has this gone, that even that natural and most happy of all the harmonies of music,--that between the male and female voice, is well-nigh lost. It is rare in what is called the better cla.s.s of music to hear them together. A woman executes for awhile, then a man executes, then the woman executes again, then the man executes a little, so they execute by turns.

The great heart-service of music is subordinated to imagination and vanity.

BAD MANNERS OF PIANO PLAYERS.

It is a mistake to suppose that, even as an accomplishment, piano playing is so very highly prized.

I dropped in to spend an hour with an intelligent friend. I was particularly interested in the Franco-Prussian war, and, as he had lived much, both in Paris and Berlin, I hoped to learn about some things not discussed in the newspapers. His youngest daughter, a beautiful girl, had just arrived, fresh from the glories of the closing exercises of a seminary.

We were in the midst of our discussions, and he was repeating some conversations with Bismark, in which I was intensely interested, when the fond, proud mother said:--

"Now, if you will listen, Gertie will play the piece which she played last Thursday evening at Madame--'s." Gertie began, alas, and she kept on, and on, and on.

There were four of us gentlemen, three were callers, one the editor of a city paper. We were all eager to listen to our host, of Bismark and Napoleon.

That unhappy child kept at it. We sat there with a hypocritical smile on our faces but, internally, as mad as we could be. When at length, the sixteen pages had been finished, and the girl turned around for the prescribed adulation, all but one of us exclaimed, "wonderful, exquisite, delightful!" and the editor, (who, when coming down in the car an hour later, emphasized his disgust with an awful big word,) declared he had never heard anything so wonderful, and added, that she really ought to go abroad to study with the great masters. The lying executed by some of us was perfect. I have forgotten whether this kind of falsehood is mentioned in the works upon white lying, but if I ever write upon "white lies," I shall give this kind a prominent place.

Girls, if you ever obtrude an average piano performance upon a company of intelligent people, engaged in conversation, nine in ten of them will secretly regard you as a nuisance, no matter how much they exclaim "exquisite, delicious, wonderful!" Of course your parents will be gratified with your performance; mamma will be pleased and proud with the show-off, and papa will smile. How else could he do, after paying $2,000 piano bills? It is a pretty picture to their eyes--the loved one seated at a splendid, great instrument, executing one of the grandest compositions of one of the immortal masters. And, although you are not inspired with the pa.s.sion of the heaven-born composer, and your performance is a mechanical, soulless hum-drum, that matters not to your father and mother, their loving imaginations will supply all that is needed to make the picture complete. But the rest of us will heartily wish that you had not interrupted our conversation.

It is an amazing blindness on the part of parents. It always astonishes me that they don't see the impertinence of the thing.

They certainly wouldn't think of asking the company to cease their conversation to hear you speak your piece, or perform a dance. The piano alone is licensed to say to everybody, "cease your conversation, and listen to me; I am about to make a big noise!"

But the fashion has never imposed upon people of sense and real politeness. When the piano has started up without even a notice, I have seen such people flush with indignation.

VICES IN MODERN MUSIC.

It may be mentioned as ill.u.s.trating still further, the false tendencies in music, that it takes a brave man to ask for a sweet, simple song. I tried it the other night. I asked a Flora McFlimsey to give us "Way down upon the Swanee River." The words, it will be remembered, are singularly pure, sweet and pathetic.

Many of the Italian songs just now so fashionable, are couched in language, listened to by pure-minded people, only because they don't understand it.

When I said, "Please sing 'Way down upon the Swanee River,'" Miss McFlimsey replied, "Excuse me, I never sing that cla.s.s of music. I haven't sung one of those simple airs, I don't know when." I know, by the way the girls looked at me, that their respect for my musical taste vanished at once and forever. If I had asked her for "Ah, que j'aime les militaire," or "Une Paule sur la mur," insufferable trash, both as to music and words, utterly beneath contempt, she would have eagerly screamed the bald bosh, and the weak ones would have declared it ineffably exquisite.*

ITALIAN OPERA.

If you understand Italian, I need not explain; and if you do not, purchase a libretto, with English translation, of almost any of the operas, and read.

Among those most popular on the American stage, I cannot recall more than two, that I should be willing to have my daughter read. But the music pupil must study every word, often every syllable of a word.

The lascivious suggestion, the sly innuendo, the bold challenge,-- they are all exhausted in the language of the opera.

One of the charms of much of this cla.s.s of music is similar to that of a new dance introduced into this country last winter; and it came, too, from the land of Italian opera. Of this dance I will only say that I overheard a buxom la.s.s telling her lady friends "that the new dance was perfectly glorious; but," said she, "it's of no use to put flowers or bows in your bosom, for they get pressed flat enough, long before the first dance is over."

Is it not a simple fact that operatic songs are popular just in proportion as they are indelicate? I have asked this question of more than a score of devotees of the opera. Half of them, perhaps, have said yes, the other half have said that the finest music happened to be a.s.sociated with naughty words. Read the words of "Un mari sage" without the music. Where, outside of a brothel, could there be found a company of girls, who, with men present, would keep their faces uncovered, and listen.

I wish you would go to the opera with me; I will show you something which will impress you more deeply than any words I can write.

Here we are, so placed, that we can look into the faces of a part of the audience. Let us select a couple, and, with our gla.s.ses, watch them.

There is a beautiful black-eyed girl,--the one with that fat, red- faced gentleman. She is about sixteen, and he about thirty. I know him. He is a regular roue, although he has the entree of many of our best homes. His companion seems a modest, sweet girl.

The opera is "Faust," one of the most unclean of the whole unclean batch.

They are both using one and the same libretto, with an English translation. This gives him an opportunity to put his arm behind her, but of course he is careful not to touch her shoulder. But we shall see, when we come to certain parts of the opera.