Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/435

Rh consciously to himself, and for want of a more intimately sympathetic conductor, a physical metronome was within him deflecting his rhythm to its standard? Contrary to the other arts, music has its birth and being entirely from within the human brain, and from within has been impressed a beat of far more rapid rate than the ictus of the recurrent industries already cited on its musical product. The suggestions all this calls forth are of course unlimited. To one we may give our fancy free rein. Mr. James Huneker in his exhaustive summing up of Chopin's music states that master's favorite metronome sign to be 88 to the minute. As 'people with considerable sensibility of mind and disposition have generally a quicker pulse than those with such mental qualification as resolution and steadiness of temper,' could one consider that the ailing Chopin's pulse helped his rhythmic tendency to 88, while the resolute steady Beethoven's was normal?

The arm of knowledge is long; it needs no yardstick with which to measure the stars. Can it feel the pulse of those who have long since crossed the boundaries that separate this world from the next?