The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-06-25
Being Humble Minded
By DR. FRANK CRANE

George, having finished college, was spend ing year or two abroad before settling down to business. One day, when the family got his weekly letter, Uncle Henry said: "Let me take that. I want to answer it." This is what he wrote to George: | I asked to answer yours of the fourteenth because having once been school teacher, I cannot get over the habit of correcting younger people. You love to be told your faults, doubtless, 1 like the rest of us! You have one fault that worries me.
 | It is that of forming opinions and trying to substantiate them.
 Take your old uncle's advice. Keep your mind open. Don't settle anything. Nothing is worse for youththan certainty, particularly | in culture values.
 You write of paying visit to my old | friend Mime. d'Espinay, that she is doubtless gifted woman, but that she does not at tract you. Madame, I happen to know, is very wonderful personality; to like her is liberal education, and you have no business not to be attracted by her. When you went to the Uffizi gallery in Florence you said that such and such pie lures did not appeal to you, especially the Botticellis.
 No doubt you told the truth. But what ap- peals to you is no criterion. You are ovcr
 
 what kind Of things you ought to like, and. | if possible, to develop a, taste for them. | When the intelligent portion of the world | for a number of years has united in saying a thing is beautiful no one under thirty has a right to say otherwise. To take an oppO- l site opinion and to stick to it is to close against yourself a whole world of cultured enjoyment. You cut off your nose to Spits your face
 You wrote that you heard Bach oratorio, l ''The Resurrection at the Sorbonno church in Paris, md you added that you made noth- ing out of it. That, instead of dismissing Bach at once for all from among your favo- rites, ought to induce you to study him. For in the realm of music no youth has moral right not to like Bach- No more unfortunate thing can happen to young man than to crawl into some com clusion and shut the door.
 Every great work of art, literature or ar chitecture that has been consecrated by hundred years of the admiration of mankind represents a well of culture for you. I am pleased with your enthuiasm over ca- thedraIs, especially NotrO Dame of Paris and the Cologne Cathedral. remember you hated them at first
 Keen goirg to the galleries and to classical concerts and operas. Familiarity wlte tne masters is the only means of developing love for them.
 Of course, don't want you to be 6 cul- tured snob, and to say you like celebrated things merely to advertise your good taste Re honest. But be humble-minded, teach able, and you will find that the past has much to tell you.
 There are two extreme of ill-breedtng. One iu represented by thosO positive young peO- ple who say, "I don't like this and like that" concerning thing whose a-tssic value tl,o;. ba+tara hava settled before they S1Cre horn. The other is seen in those young peo- pl who go into ecstacies over anything Grove and Cavalcaselle say is 'the" thing.
 Behold, show unto you more excellent way. Be truthful: When you do not like masterpiece say so, but say 80 not as clever genius reversing the error of man kind, but as an immature mind admitting your lack af annreeiatiyA power aud ansis'la to learn.l