SOLITUDE, TRAINING IN
A writer tells of a little bird which would not learn to sing the song its master would have it sing while its cage was full of light. It listened and learned a snatch of this, a trill of that, a polyglot of all the songs of the grove, but never a separate and entire melody of its own. Then the master covered its cage and made it dark; and then it listened and listened to the one song it was to sing, and tried, and tried, and tried again, until at last its heart was full of it. Then, when it had caught the melody, the cage was uncovered, and it sang the song sweetly ever after in the light. (Text.)
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Solving Worry—See [Contentment].
Son Conquered—See [Worshiper, A Mother].
Song—See [Praise].
SONG AND HUMANITY
The teacher of music should bear in mind that his subject is related to life in a profound and many-sided fashion. The songs of home and friendship, of religion and patriotism, have no small place in the higher life of humanity. To cite one example: I have been present at a Phi Beta Kappa dinner at Harvard when, at the close, the company of scholars joined hands and sang together Burns’ song of “Auld Lang Syne.” I have heard the same song at a company of ministers at a theological seminary reunion. After the battle of Manila Bay, where the British and American marines fraternized, as the British men-of-war left the harbor, the marines of both nations sang the same song. It was the music of the plowman-poet that best fitted as a parting-song of friendship for the scholar, the theologian, and the marines of two great modern nations. Read the tributes to music of noted men of letters like Carlyle and Newman. See how they have been imprest by this art, which opens into the world of the ear or sound—a word which has its artists and poets, its historians and dramatists, its architects and builders, as the world of letters or of space.—W. Scott, “Journal of the National Educational Association,” 1905.
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SONG AND SUFFERING