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Alverson, Margaret Blake, 1836-1923

"Sixty Years of California Song"

Her excessive shyness
prevented her, much as she appreciated my singing and teaching and the
interpretation of song and its different modes of expression, whether
it be sacred, descriptive, florid or romantic. She portrayed these
lines with a poet's art--never did Tennyson write his first efforts
with more beautiful description than this young poetess has written in
these beautiful lines which I cannot read without emotion. She gave me
her affectionate expression in this poem which I appreciate more
highly than rubies, and with pride I place her offering in this book
of memoirs for all to read and for all young persons who are students
to feel that a conscientious teacher deserves their love and
appreciation in return for their efforts to develop the highest
perfection in the pupil. They cannot all be poets but they can at
least honor the master by showing appreciation.
In these four years of study she had outdistanced all of those who
began with her in 1908. She plays the organ each Sabbath at the
English Lutheran Church. She has several piano pupils and once a week
practices two hours in a private ensemble club, violins, cello and
piano; has completed the course of harmony of three months, has
studied composition, writes songs and the words for them. She has
written a number of instrumental pieces for both hands, and two
numbers for the left hand. I have been honored with the gift of two of
her songs, one sacred and the other a lullaby.


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