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Sonny

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What is Happiness

[Page 53]

NOT MY DAUGHTER, OH NO!

While my music has met with most favorable reception among teachers and judges of music, it is amusing to note the expression of many who really enjoy the pieces, but are afraid of compromising

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their musical dignity and intelligence by acknowledging it.

A case in point occurs to me, where I submitted my music to a teacher for examination, who had a large class in Spartanburg, S. C., and one who was regarded as one of the leading teachers in the city. She was sick and I could not see her, but she sent me a list of her pupils, with her permission to call on them with my music, as she had seen it before and was familiar with it. I called at the first name given and played the pieces for the pupil's mother. She was aghast with amazement that ''my daughter's" teacher should have sent that kind of music here for "my daughter" to play! "She plays classic music and standard music, and I really cannot think that her teacher should have meant for her to play this kind of music! "The Boatman Dance"! "Walk Around"! "No, no, there must be some mistake. 'My daughter' wouldn't play that kind of music. Oh no!"

So I came off minus the dollar, but with its worth in something else.

As we journey on we find it is really necessary to have all kinds of people to make up this grand old world of ours. Were it not so, where would the laugh come in?

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Contact with diverse people is a good educator, and will revolutionize many an idea one starts the journey with. We are all so apt to yearn for the one thing to us unattainable. We are so apt to feel that if we had the one thing lacking, we would be content.

Are we sick? We want health. Are we poor? We want money. Are we ugly? We want beauty. Are we dull? We want life. Are we old? What would we not give for a backward turn of the wheel for a few years at least.

I have seen the time when I would gladly have sold my health to bring relief to those I loved. Now, I am content, and am convinced it is far better to be as I am, "comfortable", than rich.

There is no truer way on earth to come at the inner inwardness of man or woman than to approach them with something to sell. Ask any canvasser if this is not true. One's true nature then asserts itself. The man shows what manner of man he is, the woman shows herself as she is.

Were I a young person, man or woman, I should never marry anyone until I had, in disguise, gone to my affianced with something to sell.

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As a rule, it is far more easy to sell to an average person in moderate circumstances, than to sell to an average rich person.

One makes money for the comfort and enjoyment the spending of it brings. The other makes it and keeps it, for the pleasure of having it.

Which, of the two, gets the most out of Life?

Then there is a broader sympathy from those who work and make their own money, than there can be from those whose money was made for him, by the work of others.

We cannot judge anything unless we have tried it ourselves.

Can we pronounce a thing good or bad, because someone else has tasted it? No, we will have to taste for ourselves.

In that way, I think injustice is oft times done the rich. Many of them do not feel, because they do not know.

They do not respond, because they do not feel.

One dear old woman gave me a hearty "Goodbye, may God bless you, I wish you well. I cannot get your music or your medicine but I do hope you will succeed."

Another woman--a rich one--gave me "No, I do not wish any music. I have no time for music, and do not care for it. My time is all taken up with my family and my church work, so I do not need it."

Poor creature. How could she know?

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