YOUNG GREEK BOYS AND OLD GREEK SCHOOLS. 819 



Kidds and Red-Handed Eangers in music as in literature. Yet it is not 

 tlie words, but tlie air or complexion of the piece, that forms the ob- 

 jectionable feature. The compositions of certain authors in a sad 

 vein always make us mournful, while the productions of other artists 

 have a melancholy spirit that brings heart-satisfying consolation in 

 the gTcatest grief. One composer makes us laugh with childlike joy; 

 another makes us weep. One brings out the divine in our nature; 

 another brings out the fiend. Beethoven ennobles and Offenbach 

 degrades. Though some airs are moral and others are immoral, the 

 different effects of different music upon the mind can not be told in 

 words, and therein consists its very danger; no explanation can be 

 made, no warning given. " Home, Sweet Home," with its simple yet 

 soul-stirring melody, frees men from their baser selves, and often 

 turns them from intended crime, while the Mexican and Hungarian 

 band music, which has become so popular of late, has exactly the 

 opposite effect. The Gypsy bands, which at home are employed 

 almost solely in playing for the National Dance, begin with a calm 

 and grave measure, which, by gradually accelerated movements and 

 flourishes, added to suit the players, at last reaches an intoxicating 

 pitch of deliriously exciting complexities. Such music drives men 

 to the beer gardens, not to the churches. Plato, the Grecian Moses, 

 would have held up his hands in holy horror. 



The Greek public put music under state control, as the Chinese 

 of to-day are said to do. Though Chinese music may not be to our 

 taste, it is at least simple and free from those eccentric ornamentations 

 that mean danger to the youthful mind. Why should America pro- 

 scribe obscene literature and exempt immoral and degrading music? 

 The lyre was the principal instrument of school use. It was origi- 

 nally formed by stretching from seven to ten strings across the hollow 

 tortoise shells which may be found ready for use in any of the Gre- 

 cian rivers. It was used not only in song accompaniments, but was of 

 special value in the reciting of the poets, giving rhythm and correct 

 balance to the metre, and by its changing tones interpreting variations 

 of feeling. 



But the gymnasium, in our sense, is the one great respect in 

 which Greek education for the boy differs most from ours. The 

 Greeks, as no other nation of antiquity, believed in physical training 

 and continuous and complete bodily development. They held that 

 gymnastics not only meant health with its attendant happiness, but 

 that the absence of them made the coward and the loafer. The run- 

 ning race was of value not only because the Greeks attacked the ene- 

 my on the run, but because the consciousness of bodily strength gives 

 a boldness of spirit and a clearness of intellect that make hardships 

 endurable and loyalty supreme. Sparta made physical excellence 



