will have different significance, depending on their temperament and their interests, and varying with their æsthetic and mental endowments. To cite an illuminating example. A group of young women with the most varied interests and training started to study the Dalcroze method together. In this class there were two æsthetic dancers, two musicians, and one painter. It was interesting to see the effect of the work in eurhythmics on such different pupils. One might expect that those who had done æsthetic dancing would most easily grasp another method of expressing music by movements of the body. But this was not the case. The Dalcroze method makes bodily movements depend on the exact musical values, so that the music and the bodily expression are so closely related that together they form a whole. The dancers were used to expressing themselves by free movements, with music merely as an accompaniment. Just because the Dalcroze method depends on exact interpretation of note and measure duration, it was the three musicians and not the dancers in the class who first grasped the Dalcroze idea-a proof that eurhythmics, as the entire system is called, is not just a new variety of æsthetic dancing.

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The painter in the Dalcroze class felt that the rhythmic work gave her a fresh æsthetic sensitiveness; that it made her understand more deeply the purpose of the Post-Impressionists to express pure rhythm in painting. I used to laugh," she said, "at the people who talked of painting in terms of music, but now I can't help feeling composition that way myself. When I did this picture," she explained, showing me a sketch of Fifth Avenue done from the top of a motor bus, "the converging lines of all the streets seemed to express the main theme, the flow of the music. And all those moving vehicles in the streets below seemed to be the running accompaniment. The tall buildings, one next to the other down the line, were the individual notes of the music. And those recurrent church spires in between were the accents marking time on the beat." Then she added, "I suppose if I said this to any one but you, he would think I was posing, and never believe I feel it just that way within me. But then no one who has not experienced the Dalcroze eurhythmics himself can really understand."

Eurhythmics makes possible an active enjoyment of music. Heretofore only those

skilled in the use of a musical instrument could express themselves through music. Now Dalcroze trains us to again regard our bodies as subtle and supple instruments easily within the reach of all for the expression of the finest nuances of harmony and rhythm. How many of the people who fill the concert halls know how to listen to music actively, mentally as well as emotionally? A goodly number certainly go to concerts for an emotional thrill. Incessant concert-going, like incessant novel-reading, may become just a method of emotional debauch. Plato might have had our modern passive concertgoer in mind when in the " Republic" he points out that music taken passively may undermine the fiber of a man, while music used actively for self-expression strengthens a man spiritually.

The Dalcroze Method of Rhythmic Gymnastics was originally evolved as a special training for musicians. But the scope of the method when applied to children turned out to be far wider than had been foreseen. It became a method of education, developing physical poise, attention, and a new susceptibility to beauty of form and sound. In the Dalcroze work the time of the music is indicated by the movements of the arms and the head, the note duration by movements of the feet and body. The Note opposite the illustrations on the preceding page explains this in detail. At first it seems impossibly difficult to beat even the simplest time with the arms while walking the length of the notes with the feet. But very rapidly the motor habits are formed, and subconsciously one can continue to beat a rhythm with the arms and attend to a change in the length of the notes for the feet. Later on, the power of concentration and motor control is so completely developed that pupils are able to beat different rhythms with each arm while keeping time with their feet. When the technic of the method is mastered, it falls into the background, and simply becomes the language by which the form and time of the music are expressed, and is subject to infinite variation, while the person expresses the spirit of the music by his own moods and the quality of his gestures.

M. Dalcroze, speaking of the way his method of eurhythmics was built up, said that the method seemed simple enough at first, but his experience proved the opposite. He says: "Most children have no instinct for time, (Continued on page following illustrations)