Yesterday as I strolled through this little Hampshire village, I passed a woman with a baby in her arms, followed by a chubby boy of about three, whose little trousers had only just emerged from the petticoat stage. He lingered behind his mother, and drew across his pursed-up lips and his puffed-out red cheeks the instrument called a mouth harmonica, and drank in rapturously his own celestial harmonies.

"Come 'long with your mewsic," his mother remarked briefly over her shoulder. And he came.

I looked smilingly after that young disciple of what may be truly described as the most offensive of the fine arts, and meditated on the poverty of language which describes by the same word the art of Beethoven and the tooting of a penny whistle—at least in the vernacular of the people.

There is, perhaps, no common characteristic more unfortunate than the sheep-like habit human beings have of imitating each other. As infants, the howling of one baby certainly encourages any evilly disposed infant in the neighbourhood to imitation, and a group of roaring youngsters rejoice in their rivalling shrieks.

As we grow older this artless love of noise is of necessity controlled, but human nature must have vent, so by a kind of common consent we give way to our natural exuberance in what, for lack of other description, we are pleased to call "music." Music is the only divine art we are promised in Heaven, and it is certainly the only divine art with which we are tortured on earth.

The nerves of the ear must be the most sensitive of the whole nervous system, for they have it in their power to inflict the most exquisite torture. The silent arts, no matter how outrageously presented, cannot possibly make one quiver in agony, nor set one's teeth on edge with the sharp lash of a discord. Eyes are long-suffering, and they look at what is discordant with indifference, possibly with resignation, and at most with impatience; nor have these silent discords the power to leave the human being distinctly the worse for his experience.

No other art is able to inflict such merciless suffering! Under the name of music we are afflicted with every variety of noise, including the hand organ, the bagpipes, the German band, the man who toots the cornet in the street, the harp man, the lady who has seen better days and who sings before our house in the evening, the active piano-organ invented by a heartless genius, the musical box and all its amazing progenies, the gramophone and the pianola. Not to mention the millions of pianos and the millions of fiddles that never cease being thumped and scratched all the world over night and day. The contemplation of such collective discord is truly appalling.

Unfortunately for us we live in an inventive and imitative age, and one is inclined to think that the devil is the patron saint of inventors, or why has the blameless spinet waxed great and blossomed into a piano? Why should the resources of a modern orchestra be at the disposal of every infant whose mistaken mother plumps it down on the piano-stool and lets it thump the keys to keep it quiet! One would so much rather hear its natural shrieks than that other noise which is supposed to be a harmless substitute! Why music, of all the fine arts, with its power for inflicting untold anguish, should be the most common, passes my understanding.

The printed page is undoubtedly long-suffering, but it is silent. It is of course true that to be an author, nothing is necessary but a sheet of paper and a pencil, but I defy the most energetic author to read his work to ears that refuse to hear. Now with music it is different, one simply can't get away from it, because cruel inventions—I do not think I am exaggerating?—have brought its exercise within reach, I will not say of the poor only, for the thumping of the rich and great is equally horrid, but of the mistaken poor.

I do not urge that the infant mind, in the process of being cultivated, should be turned to literature, for it is bad enough already owing to benevolent publishers who, in the praiseworthy desire not to allow any light to be hidden under a bushel, emulate each other in trying to illuminate the world with farthing tallow-dips! It would, indeed, be ghastly to listen to the literary outpourings of every infant one met, and equally ghastly never to be able to flee from the rendering of masters of literature as interpreted by the intellect of three years up. Thank heaven, we are spared this in literature if not in music, but, I ask, if we must have a fine art to trifle with, why not take to painting? Painting is so inoffensive.

It was the English who, before they became so musical, dallied for a while with painting. There was a time, if we may believe those biographers of manners, the novelists, when all England sketched, and so gave vent to all its superabundant emotion in paint. There was no landscape safe from the emotional Englishwoman. Instead of strumming false notes on the hotel piano she went out with a paint-box and sketched the uncomplaining landscape. At any rate the long-suffering landscape made no sound.

It cannot be denied that one suffers less from a bad picture than from a bad anything else, the agony also is short, nor is it necessary in the process of painting to inflict pain. Painting is an exceedingly silent art, and its results are easily disposed of as wedding presents, because the recipient cannot possibly rebel.

There is, also, that delightful alternative of decorating one's house with one's own immortal works. I was recently shown a lovely picture gallery entirely hung with the work of its owner. I emerged from the experience smiling and quite calm. Now what would have been my condition had the good lady insisted on reciting to me eighty of her poems (there were eighty pictures), or, more harrowing still, had she insisted on playing to me eighty compositions of her own, or even eighty compositions of others, with stiff and reluctant hands? For which reason I maintain that painting is the most inoffensive of the arts and deserves to be encouraged.

But seriously, why should every child be taught to play the instrument quite irrespective of its having any talent or taste for music? Why in the world, where martyrdom is usually the price of living, should a select little army of martyrs suffer a double martyrdom? Why draw them by the hairs of their inoffensive heads to the piano-stool and make, as it were, at one fell swoop, two martyrs, the one at the piano and the wretch who, on the other side of the wall, gives the lie to Congreve, who mistakenly declared that "Music has charms to soothe a savage breast"? Had Congreve lived now he would have hesitated to make so rash a statement.

In Congreve's day the piano, the greatest instrument of torture of modern times, had not been evolved. Its ancestor, the spinet, tinkled plaintively away under its breath like a musical mosquito with a cold on its chest, and was—alas, how happily!—within reach of only the few. In those days, when its feeble tinkle was a mere whisper, house-walls were made of such stupendous thickness that not even the turmoil of a modern orchestra in the next room could have penetrated.

But now, in these unhappy days, when every family is obliged to have a piano or be despised, and when in apartment-houses each floor quivers to a piano of its own, the architect and contractor—a terrible combination for evil!—have conspired together to erect walls like tissue paper, behind which the harassed householder cowers, mercilessly exposed to musical scales as practised on an instrument powerful enough to have cast down the walls of Jericho. And here he vainly seeks for a peaceful retreat from the noise of cabs, 'buses, motors, traction-engines, electric trams, and all the other ear-splitting sounds which, apparently, follow in the relentless march of progress.

It is very appalling to consider that at this very moment the children of the entire civilised world are, with few exceptions, engaged in playing false notes on a variety of musical instruments. It is not too much to say that in this respect the uncivilised have a colossal advantage over the civilised.

In a certain familiar oratorio innumerable pages and much time are taken up in an endless reiteration of the words, "All we like sheep." I beg to ask if the worthy sopranos, altos, tenors and the rest, ever did realise the profound truth of that over-repeated and rather monotonous statement? We are all like sheep! We do what our neighbours do; we think what they think and we wear what they wear. In fact, we are tailor-made inside and out; no, we are worse than tailor-made, we are ready-tailor-made, for we are made by the gross.

If there is a thing the world shudders at and resents it is originality. If a human being cannot be classified as belonging to a certain cut of trousers, coat or waistcoats, let him beware, for he is a misfit human being, and we all know the cheap end of all misfits! It is as embarrassing to have anything obtrusive in one's mental make-up as in one's physical. Happy is he who is on a dead level!

One would like to offer up a meek plea for originality were one not aware how unpopular it would be. To be original is only next worse thing to being a genius. We do resign ourselves to sporadic cases of genius, but a world peopled by genius (for we all know what that is akin to) is more than we could stand. It is about the same with originality. So the next time we sing "All we like sheep," let us consider well the meaning of these inspiring but misunderstood words, and greatly rejoice.

This train of thought is the result of my landlady's little boy, separated from me only by a thin lath partition of a wall, playing five-finger exercises in halting rhythm and with innumerable false notes. The instrument is one in which the flight of years has left a tone like a discontented nutmeg-grater. If the little boy had the legs of a centipede and played his chosen instrument with these instead of two dingy little hands, he could not perpetrate more false notes.

The number of false notes that can be evolved through the medium of eight fingers and two thumbs is simply appalling! The little boy, a pale child in a long pinafore and big white ears, hates his chosen instrument as much as I do, and so we meet on a level of mutual affliction. I loathe hearing him, and he hates his instrument; now, in the name of good common sense, why must he be offered up as a sacrifice?

His mother is a poor woman, and the tinkling cottage piano with the plaited faded-green front represents the chops and many other wholesome things she has not eaten, and what she allows the young lady in third-floor back, who takes her board out in piano lessons, is a serious sacrifice. Now, I ask, what for?

Why is all the world playing an unnecessary piano?

Marriage has a fatal effect on music. For some occult reason as soon as a girl is married, the piano—the grave of so much money and time—retires out of active life, and swathed in "art draperies," burdened by vases, cabinet photographs and imitation "curios," serves less as a musical instrument than a warning. But like all warnings it passes unheeded, for no sooner are the next generation's legs long enough to dangle between the key-board and the pedals, than the echoes awaken to the same old false notes that serve no purpose unless an hour of daily martyrdom over a tear-splashed key-board is an excellent preparation for the trials of life.

Music, as it is taught, is not so much a fine art as a bad habit. Alas, we have got into the habit of learning to play the piano, and the bad habit of playing on the violin is fatally on the increase. Seriously now: why? Because it is considered both uncultivated and quite unfashionable not to be fond of music or to pretend to be. Why? The answer, "All we like sheep."

I know of only one man who has the courage to say that he hates music. It is his misfortune, not his fault, and without doubt there is something wrong about his inner ear. Still, I always wonder why his frank and honest confession is received with a kind of pitying contempt, as if he had writ himself down to be both a brute-beast and a heathen.

Love music, and for some unexplained reason you at once have a profound scorn for all such as do not. My friend who hates music understands and loves both pictures and poetry, and, goodness knows, there are plenty who do not! And yet I have never heard him inveigh against those who love neither. Yes, music may be a divine art, but it is certainly not a charitable art.

Even as long as one can remember, the study of music and the making of musical instruments have been terribly on the increase. Mediocrity, that might do excellent work in other fields, strums away at the piano or scratches away at the violin, or with quavering voice sings those songs which have inspired the poet to write:

The world is full of music schools, that turn out thousands of young musicians every year, who take to music instead of dressmaking or plumbing or any other useful employment, and these are let loose on a foolish world and proceed in turn to make martyrs of the defenceless infants of our land. And it is curious, too, and instructive to observe, considering the vast sums of money and the amount of time spent in the pursuit of music, how rarely one can find any one who plays or sings well enough to give even a little pleasure.

The possible reason may be that the standard of mediocrity has become so terribly high! For the halting amateur of to-day might have served as a Paderewski of the past. Our ears have grown hopelessly fastidious.

No more is the afternoon caller regaled with The Happy Farmer, as performed by the talented child of the house, and listened to with real pleasure by unsophisticated grandparents. We know too much to listen to the talented child, and as for the talented child it generally developes into a young person who has nervous prostration at the mere idea of playing before anyone. For what purpose, then, these hours of five-finger agony and those enormous bills which might have been paid for so much better results?

Then, too, consider the awful competition to which the present votary of music is subjected—pitted, as it were, against the pianola, the Æolian, the gramophone, and the other countless mechanical devices, which so successfully prove that human ingenuity can create everything but a soul. Wet blankets they are to all musical aspiration, for what musical aspiration can successfully compete against steel fingers without nerves?

I do not think one would feel so acutely about the matter if music were a silent art, and if it did not represent such a waste of money and energy which, turned to other uses, might have been of such value.

Let us have the courage to say, when it is the truth, that we dislike music. It is nothing to boast of, but neither is it a crime nor a disgrace. If your blessed Sammy bedews the piano keys with tears of anguish, and if, after a time, you discover that his soul is not amenable to the poetry of sound, then earn the fervid gratitude of your neighbour on the other side of that jerry-built wall, and release the young sufferer.

Be merciful!