Klesmer made a sort of hum, and then descended on an emphatic "Yes! The desire and the training should have begun seven years ago--or a good deal earlier. A mountebank's child who helps her father to earn shillings when she is six years old--a child that inherits a singing throat from a long line of choristers and learns to sing as it learns to talk, has a likelier beginning. Any great achievement in acting or in music grows with the growth. Whenever an artist has been able to say, 'I came, I saw, I conquered,' it has been at the end of patient practice. Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline. Singing and acting, like the fine dexterity of the juggler with his cups and balls, require a shaping of the organs toward a finer and finer certainty of effect. Your muscles--your whole frame--must go like a watch, true, true to a hair. That is the work of spring-time, before habits have been determined."

"Yes! The desire and the training should have begun seven years ago, or earlier. A mountebank's child who helps her father to earn shillings when she is six - a child that learns to sing as it learns to talk, has a likelier beginning. Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline, and patient practice. Singing and acting require a shaping of the organs toward a finer certainty of effect. Your muscles - your whole frame - must go like a watch, true to a hair. That is the work of youth."
