Lesson 5.
Test out your ideals.
What is it you have in mind to accomplish? Unless you have the way plainly charted before you, unless you are guided by the ever glowing light of a great ideal, you are almost certain to be dashed upon the rocks of failure.
We graduate from the School of Life only with the coming of Death. To some of us, Death comes early; to others, long years are granted for delving into the ever changing mystery of being. But withal, what we accomplish, is dependent on the ideal that guided and urged on our step.
Genius is infinite painstaking.
It is the determination bravely to learn the truth about ourselves and our fellow men. With a fixed determination and a fixed ideal, YOU are of genius calibre!
A month ago you set out to learn to play by the Short-Cut Method. This method holds unquestionable advantages which are available in no other way. It saves weeks of weary practice at the instrument because it enables you to work to the very best advantage when you DO play. It develops accuracy, speed and sympathetic understanding.
Here, then, is one ideal—the determination to learn to play, so that you can give joy to others, and so that you can take greater pleasure in self expression through the art of Music. The degree of your success will be measured only by the sincerity of your purpose. It’s up to you!
As Charles Dana Gibson, the famous artist says—
“There isn’t any trouble with the world, today. The trouble, if any, is with the people in it.”
Exercises 7, 8, 9, 11, and 12.