oot-pedals
may be a household blessing, and a flageolet has kept many a sheep
herder from insanity on a lonely mountain. But any report on music makes
on the whole a sad impression when the human voice is not mentioned; and
a hundred will tell of having a musical instrument and some song book or
other, where one will speak of singing in the family. Almost every
conceivable collection of songs will be mentioned but the general
impression gained will be that the American countryside is not filled
with singing; that the people do not sing at their work, and that not
one hundredth part is there of the joy due them in community music.

In the art and joy of singing together our people seem to have
retrograded. Perhaps the dominant influences at the beginning were not
favorable to this art. Whatever love we had for music was cherished,
however, in the church of New England, but the advent of the soloist in
the choir loft has put a quietus upon the musical expression in the pew.
Harriet Beecher Stowe tells us how those old billowy fuguing tunes used
to be sung, with what gusto the men and women, bass, counter, soprano,
and tenor, trained in that national institution, the singing school,
would chase the melody around, racing after one another, each singing a
different set of words, until at length by some inexplicable magic they
would all come together again and sail smoothly out into a rolling sea
of song. To her those tunes, as she remembered them from her childhood,
were like the ocean aroused by stormy winds, when deep calleth to deep
in tempestuous confusion, out of which at last is evolved union and
harmony.

It is a pity that such musical impulse as this should be allowed to go
to waste. And it is not as if the primitive musical quality were
extinguished in us, but the impulse remains submerged unless something
brings it out. Professor Peter Lutkin of Northwestern University, head
of a school of music that constantly draws students from the Western
States, says that you cannot give musical culture to an acre of the
Western land without having music talent spring there.

We should follow the example of little Wales, that sturdy sister in the
confederation of the British Isles. How wonderful is the singing of the
Welsh when they come together in their great national Eisteddfod! There
they have a national contest in which many singing societies join, and a
prize is given to the victorious one. How do we account for this g