waddle waggishly through the rain and the pigeons coo softly the
mellowest melodies that ever sounded from a feathered throat.




XII.

CAUSE FOR WONDER.

I do not wonder so much that so few people blossom into sunny old age,
as I wonder that one-half of humanity ever shows a leaf or unfolds a
bud. Look at the idiots who have children. Look at the little ones
thrown into the street like troublesome kittens. Look at the
injudicious methods of diet and training. I declare, my dear, if I
were to go into the room where Theodore Thomas was rehearsing his
orchestra, and see the flutists using their flutes for hammers, and the
violinists using their violins for tennis rackets, and the divine old
cello in the hands of a lusty blacksmith who was utilizing it for an
anvil, the sight would be nothing to what it is to see the muddle we
make of the children's sweet lives. God meant us for musical
instruments, and gave to each soul its capacity for some original
harmony. Can a flute keep its tone for three score years it you use it
for a clothes stick on wash day, or a violin retain intact the angel
voice within it if you let rats breed and nest in it, fling it against
the side of the house and dance on it with hob-nailed boots? If an
instrument subjected to such usage pipes out a silver note once in a
dozen years, uncover your head when you hear it, for it is the original
angel within the mechanism, which nothing can kill!