taught the
intervals and variations of the gamut, and ballads were popular and
part-songs by amateurs a favorite entertainment for evenings at home,
than we are in this year of our Lord. The pews in that age united with
a volunteer choir in singing with the spirit and with the
understanding. The few may not have played their part as well as now,
but the many did their part better. In the family, Jane may have
surpassed her sisters in musical talent and proficiency, but one and
all knew something of that in which she excelled, enjoying her music
the more for that degree of knowledge. This brings forward another
argument for the musical education of the masses, large and small. It
would make general and genuine appreciation of good music, and put an
end to the specious pretences of which we spoke just now. The German
artisan's ear and voice are cultivated from childhood; his love of
music is intelligent, his enjoyment of it hearty, yet discriminating.

Our babies hear few cradle songs under the new _regime_, except such
as are crooned, more or less tunelessly, by foreign nurses. Girls no
longer sing old ballads in the twilight to weary fathers and allure
restless brothers to pass the evening at home in innocent
participation in an impromptu concert, the boys bearing their part
with voice and banjo or flute. We did not make perfect music when
these domestic entertainments were in vogue, but we helped make happy
homes and clean lives.

We used to sing--all of us together--upon the country porch on summer
nights, not disdaining "Nelly Was a Lady" and the "Old Kentucky Home,"
and sea songs and love songs and battle songs that had thundering
choruses in which bassos told mightily. Moore was in high repute, and
Dempster and Bailey were in vogue. The words we sang were real
poetry, and so distinctly enunciated as to leave no doubt in the
listener's mind as to the language in which they were written. We had
not learned that tunes were musical tricks. Better still were the
Sunday evenings about the piano, everybody lending a helping (never
hindering) voice, from grandpapa's cracked pipe down to the baby's
tiny treble. Every morning the Lord of the home heard "our voices
ascending high" from the family altar, and in the nursery feverish or
wakefully-fretful children were lulled to health-giving slumber by the
mother's hymns.

These are some of the bits of home and church life we would do well to
bring forward and add to the mor