"Prof. Lafe Akin will lecture on music at the [Columbia] Baptist church Wednesday evening after prayer meeting. The object is to organize a class in vocal music, and Prof. Akin wants the people to know his qualifications to teach the principals of music and voice training...."

"We take from the Musical Visitor the following honest confession of Mr. L. Akin, of this county, which is also a compliment to Rev. I.M. Grimsley, of this county:"

"Rev. I.M. Grimsley began his third annual term in vocal at Antioc. It is a success. Some in this neighborhood thought they were well up on music and called it a short course, but they have confessed that they knew nothing about it."

Editor Visitor:- As I have never written to the Visitor I believe I'll try one, and if it escapes the junc pile I'll be surprised.

I've been a blacksmith, a carpenter, a merchant, a farmer, an officer, and now I've got up to a music teacher of the primary grade.

If you will pardon me for using myself as a subject to write about, I will relate a joke on myself about the way I found that I knew nothing about music. I like to tell this joke because I learned more than one great lesson from it. The greatest of these lessons was never to judge a stranger by his outward appearance.

One Saturday afternoon as I walked into a nearby country store, my eyes met those of a stranger some 18 or 20 years my senior whom I afterwards learned to be the Rev. I.M. Grimsley, a noted music teacher, who was on his way home from Tennessee, where he had been teaching. I often had heard of him.

He was weary and his clothes had gotten somewhat soiled by the long trip he was making on foot. After viewing him as a worthless tramp, I did not speak at first, because he and one of my neighbors were engaged in a conversation concerning the prospect of a music school at our school house. I sat down upon a nail keg and waited for a chance to speak and said: "Music is just a short course and any body can learn it in short while."

There of course, he took me for a "Smart Eleck," and, if he did he didn't miss it far, either. He looked at me for a while with a look of sympathy and slowly said, "Friend I beg to differ with you."

Well, this sounded to me like he thought I didn't know what I was talking about, so I arose with some animation and entered into an argument with him, which he met with some readiness, and I soon saw that I had met my superior in the knowledge of music. But I did not acknowledge that to him, but I quit the argument and stood back.

He made up the school above referenced to above and I was a pupil in full, and upon the first night of the school I was there to bring up all of the fine points that were left out.

But I soon found that the Rev. Grimsley was the teacher of that school, and not me. After the lesson I walked around, and for manner's sake I invited him to go home with me, and as it was raining, and as I lived close to the school house he accepted the invitation.

I was beginning to give over but didn't want to let it be known just yet. So we started for my dwelling, and had gone some distance and had not spoken a word, finally he broke in by saying, "Well, Bro. Akin, did you get anything from the lesson to-night?," just as though there was nothing else for one to learn.

"I did," was my answer.

"What was it?," he said.

There I had to fess up. I said, "I learned tonight that I don't know a blooming thing about music and but little about any thing else."

Then he ran against me and knocked me out of the road and with a hearty laugh said, "I have you now where I want to get a fellow to teach him music, you can't teach a fellow a thing when he thinks he already knows it."

We kept Bro. Grimsley three ten-day terms and since then I have taken a normal course under his instructions.

I regard Bro. Grimsley as a high class music teacher, a perfect gentleman and one of my best friends. I will say to all young people, when you meet a stranger treat him like a gentleman until he proves himself to be otherwise.

Yours with best wishes for the year,
L. Akin.

"Good for you, brother Akin. You are not like the common run of 'smarties' - they don't know how much they have to know, to know how much they don't know."