I

THE VOICE OF THE CITY


Twenty-five years ago the school children used to chant their
lessons. The manner of their delivery was a singsong recitative
between the utterance of an Episcopal minister and the drone of a
tired sawmill. I mean no disrespect. We must have lumber and sawdust.

I remember one beautiful and instructive little lyric that emanated
from the physiology class. The most striking line of it was this:

"The shin-bone is the long-est bone in the hu-man bod-y."

What an inestimable boon it would have been if all the corporeal
and spiritual facts pertaining to man had thus been tunefully and
logically inculcated in our youthful minds! But what we gained in
anatomy, music and philosophy was meagre.

The other day I became confused. I needed a ray of light. I turned
back to those school days for aid. But in all the nasal harmonies
we whined forth from those hard benches I could not recall one that
treated of the voice of agglomerated mankind.

In other words, of the composite vocal message of massed humanity.

In other words, of the Voice of a Big City.