THE VIOLINIST MATTERS MORE
A great violinist visited Houston, Texas for a concert. The newspaper, however, used most of its space to describe his original Stradivarius violin. The morning of the concert, the paper carried a picture of the great instrument he would play. That night, the hall filled with people, and the musician played extremely well. As he finished, applause thundered. After it subsided, he carefully laid the bow down and carried a chair over to center stage. Raising the violin over his head with both hands, he smashed it across the chair back. It splintered into a thousand pieces. The audience gasped. Coming back to the microphone, he said, “I read in this morning’s paper about how great my violin was. So I walked down the street and found a pawn shop. For ten dollars, I bought a cheap violin. I put some new strings on it, and that’s the violin I played this evening, the smashed one. I wanted to…
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