There is no reason why we should not follow this same principle. Of course it will not be necessary to confine ourselves to German folk-songs, although these are on the whole the best. We are a mixed people, compounded of all nationalities, and hence the folk-songs of Italy, France, Scotland, Russia and various other countries should all be acclimated in our schools. There is something peculiarly healthy and fresh about folk-songs which one only finds again in the very highest efforts of individual creative genius. They are like flowers that have grown up in virgin forests, nurtured by rain and sunshine, fanned by vigorous breezes and shielded from all the hot-house influences of a morbid civilization. So rich and spontaneous are many of these melodies that they can be thoroughly enjoyed even when sung without harmony or accompaniment, while for advanced classes it is easy to write second and third vocal parts, thus adding to their interest and value.
While early familiarity with the best of these songs would have a good effect in refining the popular sense of melody, the appreciation of what came last and is highest in music--of harmonic progressions--could best be taught by a similar familiarity with the German four-part chorals. They are the very embodiment of vigorous, soul-stirring harmony, the basis of sacred, as the _Volkslied_ is of secular, music. "Each of our churches," says Thibaut, the author of the celebrated little book on _Purity in Musical Art_, "had a period of the highest enthusiasm, which will never return, and each of them has at this very period of the most ardent religious zeal done its utmost for the development of its song." The German choral is the result of the intense devotional feelings which existed among the early Protestant congregations, and it is evident that a wholesome religious spirit could with it be introduced in our schools in a manner which could be objectionable to no denomination. In course of time these chorals might then be transferred to our churches, where they might well take the place of the easier but very eccentric melodies and incorrect harmonies now too often heard there.
In one of the side streets of a city which fronts on Long Island Sound is to be found a curiosity-shop whose show-window challenges the attention of all lovers of the quaint and queer by its jumble of cracked and ancient porcelain, old-fashioned brasses and small articles of more or less valuable bric-à-brac. Inside, the three small rooms are crowded with sets of delft and willow china, old candlesticks, clocks, andirons, fenders, high-backed chairs and the like. The whole aspect of the place is shabby and dingy, and the antique furniture has no chance of showing either its worth or its dignity amid such surroundings; yet the traffic which goes on in this "curiosity-shop" has already brought a respectable fortune to the owner, and promises, if the rage for revivals of ancient fashions continues, to make him a capitalist. Knapp, as we will call this dealer in second-hand furniture and bric-à-brac, began his trade some five or six years ago. He was originally a tin-peddler, travelling up and down the country with his wagon, offering tin and glass ware in return for rags, feathers and old metals. Knapp probably had, to start with, a touch of that original genius which transmutes the most ordinary conditions of life into means of personal aggrandizement. He laid the stepping-stone to his fortune when it one day occurred to him to accept a piece of old-fashioned Wedgwood ware in return for half a dozen shining tins. It was an inspiration which he considered half a weakness, but he yielded to it, and afterward had cause to congratulate himself when he found an opportunity for disposing of the cup at a remunerative rate. This gave him an impulse of curiosity toward any heirlooms in the way of china and pottery to be found among the farmers' wives in the section of New England he traversed; and his activities soon had their reward. At that date the passion for ceramics was but just beginning to invade our cities, and not a suspicion of it stirred the minds of the good women who artlessly opened their cupboards and displayed their treasures of Worcester china and willow-ware to the ingratiating Knapp. No man in the world was ever better calculated to drive good bargains for himself, yet leave an impression on his victim's mind that the peddler's interest in a "sort of china which matched a set his grandmother used to have" was running away with his better judgment.