Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1877 — Reformatory Influence of Music. [ARTICLE]

Reformatory Influence of Music.

A reporter of the Chronicle who recently visited the Industrial School was very much impressed by what be saw and learned there concerning not only the taming, but the reforming and refining influence of a " concord of sweet sounds.” Attached to the institution is a music teacher who has at all times in active training a number of boys, who perform on the various instruments that make up a brass band. This teacher, v/ho is an intelligent German, and, to all appearances, an able instructor, testifies to the wonderful efficacy of music in softening the rugged natures of the boys who are sent to the school, usually because they are uncontrollable by parents or guardians. He says he has noticed the singular fact that boys whose aversion to learning was so great that they could not or would not acquire even a knowledge of their “a-b, abs,” took hold with evident relish of the comparativffly difficult study of theoretical music, and In a very short space of time mastered the notes sufficiently to be able to read a tolerably hard score or piece oi music. This seemed to him like a phenomenal phase, and he can only account /or it on the ground that a love of music is inherent in the average bad boy. He has usually in training a band of twenty pieces, but he says that this number he could easily augment at any time to two. tnree or even four times as many, for he very rarely finds a boy that has not a taste for some musical instrument. The greatest trouble he has yet encountered in the formation of his bands is the fact that as soon as his pupils become really proficient they are ready for a discharge for good conduct, the music possessing such an influence for good over them as to completely reform dispositions that would be otherwise incorrigibly bad. Since he has held the position of music teacher at the institution, boys have been discharged for good and promising conduct who have turned their knowledge of music acquired within the walls of the Industrial Bchool to profitable account. San Francisco Chronicle. —ln a recent letter to the Baltimore American, Jennie June wrote a plaintive true story of what a woman did. I have one to match it: Two or three years ago. an aged mother gave her daughter several thousand dollars to invest for her in some safe and productive securities. By the advice of a friend in Wall street, the daughter was led to purchase certain West Virginia railway bonds. This proved to be a fatal mistake, for in a few montbs the stock became worthless, and the little fortune was lost. As soon as the daughter received the news, she determined by her own exertions to replace every cent of her mother’s money, and never let the de r old lady know that It hau been lost. She did this with her pen, working early and late, denying herself, scouring city and country for information. And she accomplished the task just as Harriet Martineau forced success from the most adverse circumstances. That woman was "Jennie June” Croly herself. —Boston Transcript. —lt would probably be only a laugl - ing matter if a comet should strike the earlh—a little wreck creation, as it were.