CHAPTER XXVI

THE SONGS OF THE SEASONS

ONE might write a book alone on the songs of

the seasons. Winter has its own songs of storm and wind, hail and frost, crackling ice and crunching snow, howling blizzard and roaring avalanche, even as Autumn has her songs of the falling leaves as they rustle and whir in the playing breezes, or dash and mass together in the angrier storms. Springtime is full of song. Every tree becomes actively vocal, and every blade of grass, flower, shrub and growing thing sings its song of joy in that it is about to come into the active life of expression, after a long Winter of dormancy. Then, when the buds. and blossoms spring forth, the songs of color are added to those of sound, and the trills and roulades of the birds, the mating pleas of the tiny feathered inhabitants of the trees, as they fly to and fro, singing their adoration one of another, and putting the joy of loverhood and future parenthood into their voices, make Springtime one long-continued joytime.

And Summertime with its ripening grain, glistening and singing in the sunshine, covering the brown and black earth and making it radiantly golden; with

its trees, richly clothed in their perfect robes of shaded green, and hung with their God's gifts of red and pink and purple and golden fruit-oranges, lemons, peaches, apricots, pears, apples, plums, cherries, figs, persimmons, guavas, prunes,-how Summer sings of its joyous fruit time, of harvest, of usefulness! And the tree toads and frogs, the cicadas, the locusts, the crickets, the "bull-frogs in the pond," join in with their notes of praise-nay often full choruses which they keep going all through the night. The nightingale of the south and west-the incomparable mocking-bird-having transmuted the rich nectar of the various fruits into richer and soul-entrancing music, and the linnets and thrushes and flickers and meadow-larks and the thousand and one other "Pattis of the grove" add their songs until one feels that Summer time is also a perpetual song time, happy time, full of thanksgiving to God.

How Grieg and the other great tone poets listened to and echoed for us these Songs of the Seasons. One listens to the great Norwegian's various Nature compositions and his heart thrills with joy at the responses a musical nature can make to the songs of the outside world.

Springtime is essentially the time of rejoicing. It is the love time of the world. As Tennyson says: In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's

breast;

In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest,

In the Spring a livelier iris mantles on the burnished dove; In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Everything is bursting into joyous expression. Winter's sleep is over, the new life of the coming year is demanding outlet. The shoots are thrusting their heads above the softening ground; the leaves are budding out all over the black branches of the trees; the birds are mating and singing; the very sky responds to the universal mood, and changes its dull grayness to a charming blue that attracts the eye and forms a deliciously beautiful background for the white clouds that come floating into sight.

It was undoubtedly this spirit of joyous Springtime that led to the establishment of the May Festivals. How many centuries these go back it is hard to tell. There is little doubt but that they had their origin when the aboriginal peoples of the earth began to note the difference between Winter and Springtime. It was one of the early expressions of thanksgiving and of prayer and is continued in the ceremonies of the Pueblo Indians of our southwest today. In these ceremonies they petition the Mother of Germs, that she will make every seed of every kind to grow-in flocks and herds, in tree and cornfield, in herb and grass, so that life may be continued. They are practically May Festivals of the earliest known type, and they consist of singing, praying, thanksgiving and dancing.

In our day these May Festivals resolve themselves into great singing or orchestral gatherings in the larger cities, where vast choruses and orchestras, led by noted soloists and conducted by the Masters of Music of our day, give concerts of a more or less formal type. Mendelssohn's Lobegesany or Hymn of Praise came nearer to being a genuine and spontaneously appropriate theme for a Spring Festival than perhaps even he knew, for it was a reversion to the original object of the May time thanksgiving of our primitive ancestors. It was written for the great Birmingham (England) Festival and was conducted by the composer himself.

After Spring comes Summer, the ripening time, the heat time, when all Nature seems to bend her energies to bring to fruition that which she has started to grow. As the days and nights become hotter the wheat, barley, oats, rye and corn grow higher, the ears fill out, and the farmer watches eagerly, for upon the kindness of the summer months he knows the value of his crops largely depend. Just as soon as possible the reaping and mowing machines are sent into the fields. The scent of new-cut grass fills the air, and soon it changes to the delicious odor of the curing hay. The shocks of wheat and corn are exposed to the heat of summer's sun, and soon the hum of the thresher is heard in the land. In California, where the heat is steady and constant, and there is little moisture in the air, the cutting

of the grain and its threshing are performed in one operation by immense "headers." These machines cut off the heads of the grain, and thresh and sack it at one operation. Sixteen, twenty, twenty-four or even more horses and mules, propelled the great machines through the grain fields, until tractors were invented, and now the whole harvesting is done by machinery.

Those who depend on fruit for their crop watch their orchards, spraying them every now and again to check the pests that love to feast on peaches, nectarines, apples, pears, plums, persimmons, oranges, and the like, but to do so burrow their way into the juicy fibre. How a heavy crop delights the eye of the farmer. How he watches the apples and plums change from their unripe green, until the full empurpling and reddening has taken place that denotes ripeness; or, if it be oranges that form his crop, he watches for the deep yellow to come. Summer is a great magician. The beams of the sun are his magic wand and he waves them constantly, never resting, never forgetting, never failing, and so vigorous are his daily ministrations that, even when darkness falls, he leaves the heat vibrations still in the air, not only as a reminder of his passing today, but a pledge that he will return tomorrow.

And what subtle chemistry the waving of that magic wand sets in motion.

Laboratory, still, melting-pot, furnace, reduction