CHAPTER X

THE SONGS OF CHILDHOOD

DURING its baby period every child should be blessed by the sweet and gentle singing that springs spontaneously from the heart of a woman who feels that heaven has descended upon her in allowing her to give birth to a child. The glorious privilege of parenthood, of being a channel through which one of God's children may find expression and opportunity for development, no one can overestimate. Thus the child is ushered into a home of joyous song, of tender and beautiful affection, of welcomed and adoring parenthood. In such a home all life is pretty well assured to be a continuous songhusband and wife vying with each other in their desire to add more and more happiness to the hours of the loved companion. They feel the beams of God's smiles and sing joyously with Him. A child beginning and continuing life in such an atmosphere is normally bound to be a singer. He cannot help but be one.

During this period he should be encouraged to sing. At home, at school, at church, at social gatherings, at public functions, in a chorus or as a soloist,

any how, every how, keep him (and her) singing. And teach him the songs you want him to know, to love, to follow. The Scandinavian habit of teaching children real "songs of life" is a fine one that cannot be too highly commended. While there should be no forcing of the child's mind in any directionfor compulsion is always repulsive to a child-there should be a wise leading in the right direction. Elsewhere I have referred to the songs my father used to select for us, and that the family sang each morning when we met, before the open fire, for "reading the scripture and prayer." Scores of those songs remain in my memory and each one brings its own peculiar delight, aye, and many of them enforce their own insistent and peculiar truths and lessons. And this is in accord with the highest dictum of modern psychology. He knew what he said, who declared: "Let me make the childhood songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws." He had learned that the impressions made upon the receptive mind of childhood were the enduring and persistently alive ones. Nay more, realized that, as a child grows into adulthood and man- or woman-hood the words of the songs of childhood come to mean more and more. Words that to the child mind meant little or nothing; that were merely repeated formally,because he had learned them,-grow in significance and power. What does a child know of "pleasures and palaces," and roaming therein, or of "a charm

from the skies" which hallows us in the humble place we call "home." Yet there is something in the tune that makes it pleasing to every child. Let him learn it—the younger the better, whether he understands the words or not.

When he grows to the age of comprehension, of understanding, then he will realize the full significance of the words. But, having learned them, and now having them come to their full force, "home" is a very different thing to him from what it would have been had he not learned them. He is perpetually under their influence; they guide, suggest, restrain, impel, inspire thoughts and acts up to the very gateway of death.

Hence the vast importance of a wise selection of the songs of childhood, of completely surrounding every child with the beautiful influences of songs of inspiring and ennobling motives. Child songs

should be cheerful, bright, true to all the nobler instincts of our nature, full of love of home, parents, friends, city, state, nation, and inculcating a true patriotism. They should be redolent of green fields, the varied beauty of buds and blossoms, the lowing of kine, the happy playing of young animals, the sweet songs of birds, the companionship of good horses and dogs, the splendors of trees, the tenderness of pastoral landscapes, the sublimity of the mountains, the awful grandeur of the canyons, of the glory of sky, stars, sunrises and sunsets. They should emphasize

in the most positive manner the joy and delight of service, of duty performed cheerfully and with alacrity and thankfulness for work to do and the ability to perform it. They should breathe the joy of good comradeship and inspire towards complete human brotherhood.

Such songs should be heard everywhere, or, what is the same thing, their spirit made to inspire every act of life for this is Singing through Life with God. In the home, at the fireside, at family prayer, at family reunions, when the boys and girls bring in their comrades or the neighbors and their youngsters "drop in," at day and Sunday school, at church, picnics, swimming parties, rowing matches, hiking expeditions, in gymnasiums and while doing all exercises, and in men's and women's clubs, let everybody learn to sing. Every town and village should have its weekly Community Sing, with a competent, cheerful, inspiring leader, and everybody should be urged not only to come and listen but to join in the song.

From the health of the body standpoint alone Community Singing is worth more to a community than a dozen brass bands or fine orchestras that citizens merely listen to. There is an inconceivable distance between the effects upon the body of music merely heard-and generally only partially heard— and music participated in, enjoyed, engaged in with zest. Any physician or teacher of physical culture

can show how the expansion of the lungs, the deep breathing, the use of the diaphragm in singing is of the greatest benefit to the body alone, and the psychologist can demonstrate in thousands of cases the remarkable benefit that comes to the mind, the soul, the living character from participation in cheerful song. Why, it has even been demonstrated, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that hens under the influence of vocal or instrumental music lay more eggs, and cows give down more milk, and are milked far easier, under the same benign influence.

Therefore it is the part of highest wisdom, from an altogether selfish standpoint, for communities to foster the spirit of song, and encourage the actual practice among its children, its youth and its mature citizenship. For as surely as "the way one feels" will excite one to song, or inhibit vocal expression, so will joining in song even though one does not, at first, feel like it, have a powerful influence upon the mind, the emotions and those sources of life within us that go to the making up of character.

Burglars, thieves, purse-snatchers, pickpockets, counterfeiters, train robbers, highwaymen, murderers, are not of the people who sing. It is because no song is in their hearts-much less on their lips-that they degenerate and become other than their true selves. A songful people is a happy people; a happy people is a good people, and a good people cannot breed, rear and develop criminals. Song renews the