It is always a pleasure to talk upon self-help and not self-study,
because I believe most implicitly in the former and very much doubt the
efficacy of the latter in actual voice study. The voice, of all things,
demands the assistance of a good teacher, although in the end the
results all come from within and not from without. That is, the voice is
an organ of expression; and what we make of it depends upon our own
thought a thousand times more than what we take in from the outside.
It is the teacher who stimulates the right kind of thinking who is the
best teacher. The teacher who seeks to make his pupils parrots rarely
meets with success. My whole career is an illustration of this, and when
I think of the apparently insurmountable obstacles over which I have
been compelled to climb I cannot help feeling that the relation of a few
of my own experiences in the way of self-help could not fail to be
beneficial.