"How To Develop Positive Thinking, Right and Wrong Thinking & Their Results..."

With the beginner every action is preceded by a fully recognized thought.

The position at the piano, the poise of the shoulders and head, the control of the arms and hands, the action of the fingers, and just how they must be moved in each particular case for striking each key, and the force of each stroke -- all these are the subjects of conscious thinking on the part of the student.

Not a motion is made without previous thought, which includes not only the thought to move but also how that motion is to be accomplished.

After long-continued repetition of the motions included in the first and simpler lesson, when each thought has, so to speak, worn its own peculiar channel into the brain and has become so familiar that consciousness of it has some- what waned, then a more difficult lesson is undertaken.

The thinking which preceded the simpler actions gradually disappears, being displaced or submerged by the attention given to more difficult ones, until finally all conscious recognition of it ceases.

With each step the thinking connected with the preceding practice drops gradually out of sight until at last the performer's conscious thought is all directed to expression.

This requires careful attention to each of the many difficult and more delicate peculiarities of every single motion which, in proper combination, express the soul of music.

These motions are necessarily preceded by an immense host of unnoticed thoughts, because without them the performer would be motionless and the instrument dumb.

Each step suggests to the mind the next one to be taken, and thus the series moves in its accustomed order.