THE BENEFIT OF SINGING

1. IT improves our speaking. It often corrects any defects of speech, such as stammering, hissing or a nasal enunciation. Some parents have declined to send their children to the Singing School be cause of these defects of voice. This is a great mistake.

2. It improves our hearing. By listening to singing, we learn to distinguish the relative position of the notes uttered by one voice; our ear thus becomes practiced, and able to convey the nice distinction of tone to the seat of perception. Thus, by endeavoring gradually to imitate others, we succeed in rendering the organs of voice capable of reproducing the sounds which the ear has received.

3. It improves the health of children. One of the prejudices most obstinately maintained against teaching children to sing, arises from an opinion frequently broached, that singing, if practiced at a tender age, may have a baneful influence on the health, and may occasion spitting of blood and other pulmonary affections. It is not long since this idea prevailed in Germany also; but the most minute investigations, made by governments as well as parents, have proved it to be quite erroneous.

Nothing is better calculated than the practice of singing to produce the power of free respiration. We are convinced that singing, or as it may be termed, the art of breathing, is one of the best preventives of, and. surest remedies for, general weakness of the chest; and that its use, provided always it be proportioned to the other physical powers of the singer, is calculated to exert a most favorable influence on delicate constitutions, to impart vigor to the organs connected. with the lungs, and thus to conduce to a healthy state of all parts of the body.

It was the opinion of Dr. Bush, that singing by young ladies, whom the customs of society debar from many other kinds of salubrious exercise, ought to be cultivated not only as an accomplishment, but as the means of preserving health. He particularly insists that vocal music should never be neglected in the education of a young lady, and states that besides its salutary operation in soothing the cares of domestic life, it has a still more direct and important effect. In hi remarks on this subject, the Doctor introduces a fact which was suggested to him by his professional experience, which is, that the exercise of the chest by singing contributes very much to defend the lunge from the diseases to which the climate and other causes expose them. The Germans, he continues, are seldom afflicted with consumption, nor has he ever known more than one instance of spitting of blood among them. This, he believes, is in part occasioned by the strength which constitutes an essential branch of their education.