Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. 3, No. 5

ILLUSTRATED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY.
No ladder needs the bird, but skies
To situate its wings,
Nor any leader's grim baton
Arraigns it as it sings.
The implements of bliss are few—
As Jesus says of Him,
'Come unto me,' the moiety
That wafts the cherubim.
—Emily Dickinson.
H, Music! voice inspired of all our joys and sorrows, of all our hopes and disappointments, to thee we turn for life, for strength and peace. The choristers of Nature—the birds—are our teachers. How free, how vital, how unconstrained! The bird drops into song and delicious tones as easily as he drops from the bough through the air to the twig or ground. To learn of the bird has been found to be a truthful means whereby children's attention and interest may be held long enough to absorb the sense of intervals in pitch, notation on the staff, and rythms.
In teaching a child, it is obvious that the desire to learn must be kept widely awake, and heretofore black notes on five lines and four spaces, with heiroglyphics at the beginning to denote clef, and figures to indicate the rhythm of the notes, have never interested children. But now, color and the bird with its egg for a note, telegraph wires for the staff, and swinging the pulsing rhythm instead of beating the time, has charmed children into accomplishment of sight singing and sweet purity of tone. Formerly, and by the old method, this was a long and laborious task, barely tolerated by the musical child and disliked by the little soul unawakened thereby to its own silent music.