Scan 67
A Review Of Ancient And Modern Violin Making, 1899
4 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1came when I found that even the best makers were more likely to produce poor violins than good ones. This fact prevented me from becoming an apprentice, for I could hardly hope to accomplish more than my teacher. Poor violins were on every hand, while a really good one was so rarely found that the happy possessor was greater than a king in my estimation. The good and the poor could not be distinguished by the looks. Then the question came to me: "Why not all be made equally good?" I felt that this difference should not exist, for as long as a maker might produce a poor instrument, violin making could not be truthfully called a science. I resolved to change this order of things, or never be known as a violin maker. I felt it to be an art too profound to be dragged in the dust by my ignorance, for I could not lay the failures to anything but lack of knowledge. But where and how should I begin? Could one be placed more utterly in chaos? I think not.
3I had already found that there was no true basis from which to study a violin, from the fact that two good instruments might present conditions of construction diametrically op-
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