WHAT WE LOSE AND WHAT WE GAIN. 22$ 



twenty times as much good music as the aver- 

 age New York girl even in fashionable life 

 is likely to hear, and a hundred times as much 

 talk about it, there is no fear that if they have 

 any capacity for the divine art, it will not make 

 itself felt. It is so rare to find among even our 

 so-called best people of the town any under- 

 standing or appreciation of the meaning and 

 beauty of literature, music, and art, that the 

 fear that my children may not know something 

 of these things because they do not habitually 

 associate with these so-called best people, 

 seems really comical to me. The well-to-do 

 people of the city will spend money upon any 

 thing but art ; they will cheerfully lavish dol- 

 lars upon mahogany furniture with stucco 

 veneering, but it will never occur to them to 

 try pine and have their children taught to 

 understand a Beethoven sonata. It has been 

 said that under such a system as mine my 

 boys are likely to grow up fishermen, and 

 nothing more, and that my girls will probably 

 know how to make good butter. Even taking 

 this material view of the matter, I am not at 

 all sure but that an intelligent fisherman who 

 lives in comfort the year round, harassed by 



