Their Voices stir me, rouse me, speak to me with old very joyous, very woful meanings.
The children fairly leap out of the school-building through doors and down fire-escape stairways. And their Voices are at once hurled skyward, clamorous and chaotic.
The Sound they make is a roundly common sound yet ‘winged.’ It is an untrammeled Sound, uncultivated, only a little civilized.
It is world-music.
In it is the note beyond culture, higher than civilization, and older. It is brave as voices of the shrilling winds and warmer, viriler. It is liltinger than bird-songs and lustier than roarings of mountain cataracts.
Music of the world!—
A little door inside me opens to those Voices.
My little door opens at the first shriek of the first child out of doors, and I hear not only the hundreds of vivid piercing Voices but more—their far-off echoes.
They are the Voices of children, children light-held in crude cold innocence. The eyes of the children are clear—their impulses and instincts rule their little lives. They are yet untouched by the tiredness and terror and shame and sorrow of being human beings.