=The Cranks= of a =Columbia Bicycle=

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differ from all other bicycle cranks. Easy to take off, easy to clean bearings, easy to put back. No nuts or bolts to work loose or catch trousers.

Look like one piece; _are_ one piece mechanically.

=One of the many improvements that maintain Columbia Standard.=

_"1896 Machine in 1895."_

=GET THE NEAREST AGENT TO EXPLAIN.=

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GENERAL OFFICE AND FACTORIES, HARTFORD, CONN.

BRANCH STORES:

BOSTON, NEW YORK, CHICAGO, PROVIDENCE, PHILADELPHIA, BUFFALO, BROOKLYN, BALTIMORE, WASHINGTON, SAN FRANCISCO

Postage Stamps, &c.

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100 all dif. Venezuela, Costa Rica, etc., only 10c.; 200 all dif. Hayti, Hawaii, etc., only 50c. Ag'ts wanted at 50 per ct. com. List FREE!

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[Ill.u.s.tration: If afflicted with SORE EYES USE Dr. ISAAC THOMPSON'S EYE WATER]

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Good Music

Franklin Square Song Collection.

GOOD MUSIC arouses a spirit of good-will, creates a harmonious atmosphere, and where harmony and good-will prevail, the disobedient, turbulent, unruly spirit finds no resting-place. Herbert Spencer puts his final test of any plan of culture in the form of a question, "Does it create a pleasurable excitement in the pupils?" Judged by this criterion, Music deserves the first rank, for no work done in the school room is so surely creative of pleasure as singing. Do we not all agree, then, that Vocal Music has power to benefit every side of the child nature? And in these days, when we seek to make our schools the arenas where children may grow into symmetrical, substantial, n.o.ble characters, can we afford to neglect so powerful an aid as Music? Let us as rather encourage it in every way possible.

_Nowhere can you find for Home or School a better Selection Of Songs and Hymns than in the Franklin Square Song Collection._

Sold Everywhere. Price, 50 cents; Cloth, $1.00. Full contents of the Several Numbers, with Specimen Pages of favorite Songs and Hymns, Sent by Harper & Brothers, New York, to any address.

A Treat for the Music Rack.

At the close of my former "Anecdotes of Von Bulow," I wrote against the German conservatories in general, and against Stuttgart in particular. Here are a few sentences on the same subject taken from an article by John C. Filmore which appeared in the December issue of _Music_:

"Touch in general is of two kinds, that based upon the blow principle and that based upon the principle of pressure. The former was the kind of touch universally prevalent. It is exemplified in extreme degree in Plaidy's _Technical Studies_, and in Lebhert and Stark. Unmodified by other ideals, it produces a hard, rigid, unelastic touch, and a corresponding dryness and monotony of tone quality such as makes really expressive and artistic piano-playing impossible. This is the reason why the Stuttgart Conservatory, with its hundreds of pupils, yearly turns out no real artists. The pressure principle has found place in the playing of many European pedagogues without being adequately a.n.a.lyzed or explained. Julius Knorr and his pupils employed this kind of touch with beautiful effect; but if any of them even so much as mentioned the distinction between blow and pressure, I have never been able to hear of it.

"The two most valuable means of producing that condition of the nervous and muscular apparatus on which a sympathetic touch, based on the pressure principle, depends, are, so far as I am aware, the two-finger exercise of Dr. William Mason, and the up-arm touch.

This latter is very lightly touched upon in the first volume of Mason's _Touch and Technic_; but it is of enormous value, as I have had occasion to know in the experience of the last years, and vastly more can be done with it than most players and teachers are aware."

I also stated in my last that Von Bulow was not a _great_ pianist.

But that he was a _popular_ pianist there can be no doubt, though why he was popular it is hard to understand; for, according to Finck, Von Bulow was a pianist in whom the intellectual greatly overbalanced the technical and emotional; and so his playing, while it might be interesting in a certain sense, was really dry from its lack of the emotional quality. Perhaps if Von Bulow had been born half a century later he might have been a greater pianist, for at present the advantages for piano students are much greater than formerly.

I suppose that when Von Bulow was young Stuttgart and similar schools were in the lead, and from those his technic touch and emotional tendencies could not be as fully developed as at the present day--not in Germany, but rather in Paris, or even in the great musical centres of our own country. But the great advantage that the "Home of Music" has over us is in her concerts and opera; not so much quality as quant.i.ty, and at _cheaper rates_. We have good concerts, but so few, comparatively, and too high-priced for the average person to attend many. How can a violin or a piano student in this country hear many violinists or pianists? It is in this respect that Germany is far ahead of us; while it is in her system of piano teaching and playing that she is pedantic and behind the age; and the sooner she awakens to a realization of the unfortunate truth, the better it will be for our nevertheless ever dear beloved Germany.

MARIE THeReSE BERGE.

NEW YORK CITY.

The Helping Hand.