million girls
of the countryside--what can they do to redeem the country from this
dull silence and unmelodious tedium? What, in fact, might they not do?
Let every one of them resolve that she will wake up every morning
singing; that she will sing at her work all day long; that she will call
for songs in the evenings, with the whole family around--not one, of any
age, allowed to be absent from the circle; that she will require that
music of some sort shall be part of the ceremony of every society and
club she belongs to; that she will get the young people together to sing
once at least every week; that she will suggest that the older people
should sing together--it is unnecessary and absurd to let the singing
days disappear along with youth into the background; and that she will
persevere in this till the whole countryside shall ring with song from
east to west, and until the stigma that we are a people that do not care
for music shall be forever removed. We have some magnificent old folk
songs; we have glorious national songs; we have some religious songs
with a marching rhythm and a fervor that make them good for every day in
the week, for threshing times and for all times; we have a song for
every mood and every experience; why not use our songs and enjoy them?

The larger breadths of musical repertory are not so far away from the
remote country places as formerly, now that the victrola and other
instruments of like kind bring a knowledge of the great orchestral and
operatic passages to our very sitting-room. Every village should have
this help in order to understand the great music that without it might
be shut off from us. There should be one in every social center for
general use in the community. A good way is for some member of the
music-study committee to give a description of the opera or the
oratorio, with comments on the particular passage that the instrument
can render; then the listeners are better able to understand what is
being played and by the imagination to place the solos in their right
background as they are being heard; an impression of the work as a whole
will be thus gained that will to some extent approach the composite
scene as it is shown on the stage. "Ah! can you imagine what the
victrola means to us out here on this prairie!" wrote a friend from
western Nebraska. This may be the experience of every rural circle the
country over if it will only have community spirit enough to work
together