Friends Can Help
Advice of friends is a source of value or injury to the singing student.
Advice has its influence. Every word spoken about one's voice and
singing helps or injures. If placed in a circle which condemns every
effort we make we are held back by that very influence from doing our
best. Every judicious word of praise helps us upward. A pupil who is
struggling by himself, without a word of cheer in his own home circle
has a
hard fight of it. For that reason it is very necessary that pupils
whose desires are similar, and whose aims are toward the highest, should
be gathered together. They help by their words, and often by their
looks, the anxious student. "Forsake not the assembling of yourselves
together," applies. After a pupil's recital, a judicious teacher will
tell his pupils the kind things which the others have said. If unkind
things should be said (but a teacher who is himself kind will not hear
unkind things) he will keep those to himself, guiding himself, however,
by those comments in the future treatment of that criticized pupil. In
this connection, a word to the members of the family of the student. A
mother, who steps into the practice-room occasionally when she hears
good singing and says, "That was good. I see you are improving," aids
the student as much as a half-dozen lessons will aid. A brother who
banters his sister about her singing when he really enjoys it, knows
not, oftentimes, that his banter hurts and harms. To be sure, the
partiality of the home circle may foster false hopes, but since nearly
every one can learn to sing well if rightly trained, that will do less
harm than cold indifference and cruel banter.