The Portland daily press., 1892-04-02
SHE INITIATES BIRDS.
A Young Woman Who Sings Like
Natures Songsters.

She Can Transport You Into the Depths
of Cool, Green Woods-She Mimics Any
Bird from the Duck to tho Meadow
Lark, or the Nightingale and Thrush
It is straight from the throat that Miss
Mabel Stephenson let's loose that won
derful flood of ripping, twittering bird
melody.
It is really very remarkable what this
modest and gentle faced young girl
does. She is such a very quiet and I'M
obtrusive young person at first sight
that the surprise when she gives you the
first inti1nation of her gifts is all the
greater.
When in her very artless way she be-
gins her little recitation about birds,
and then suddenly breaks into it, and
from that moment goes weaving and
winding all through it, that marvellous
linked chain of all the liquid bird mel
ody of an entire forest and meadow bird
orchestra, the effect is quite startling.
Shut your eyes, and you are no longer
in the frowzy atmosphere of a theater.
It is an early morning in June, and you
are out in the woods somewhere. There
are no electric lights and gas jets. It is
blazing summer sunlight. It is the odor
Of the forest, not Of the foothghts, that
comes to you. Certainly it is very as
tonishing thing to be done just by the
loosening and contracting of vocal
chords, with the valuable aid of bron-
chial tubes and a thorax.
REMARKABLE GIFT.
Miss Stephenson says, and after hear
ing her you are quite prepared to believe
it, that she can initiate any bird that
wears wings and feathers, and as wings
and feathers are part of the anatomical
equipment of all birds, it amounts to
saying that she can initiate them all.
She can give the judicious and nonfriv
olous "quack, quack" of the conservative
and serious minded duck as accurately
as she can initiate the giddy, soaring
song of the vanishing skylark. It was
very early acquisition with her. She
took to talking bird lingo almost as soon
as she took to talking the sound COM
mercial English of Michigan, where she
was born.
She is true American girl, Miss
Stephenson, and she has mingled in the
very best American bird society. Her
repertoire is almost exclusively that Of
our own sweet singing American birds.
She was in England recently, and picked
up the songs of the thrush, nightingale
and skylark Just to show these stars Of
English bird opera that their songs were
easy enough, and that anybody who had
had course in an American bird music
conservatory could do them. But it is
the whippoorwill, the yellow breast,
the chicadee, the redbird, the catbird,
the meadow lark, the swallow, the bobo-
link and, of course, the robin with the
red waistcoat- are the birds, good
Americans all, whose songs she loves
best to sing.
Then she can give to perfection the
weird, melancholy cry Of the loon and
can pipe SO like the quail that you have
only to shut your eyes and fancy that
you are out in the brown stubble Of the
fields. Neither the domestic goose nor
the grave and reverend owl can be
classed exactly among the merry war
bling songsters of the feathered kind,
but they each have method Of express
ing disapproyal.
HOW SHE LEARNED.
1t was simply for her own amusement
that she first developed her remarkable
gifts Of imitation, until now she has
found that she can turn it to source of
profit, and this she is doing.
Her bird language edWation was only
just begun in the country out in Michi
gan. When she was very little girl
she came to New York to live, and since
then she has had to depend upon bird
stores and upon such birds as she and
her friends possess for her tuition.
Now, to come back to the physiology
cal feature of the matter, there are
good many people who will tell you just
exactly how Miss Stephenson Goes these
wonderful limitations. It is nothing
more than whistling pure and simple,
many of them will say. The very keen
and knowing ones sheer even at whis-
thing. Nobody could whistle in that
way, they say, with just the whistling
apparatus furnished by nature. Miss
Stephenson, they will tell you, has SONS
ingenious little mechanical device for
making the sounds, which she conceals
in her mouth.
All this makes the gifted bird soloist
laugh. She could not whistle a note it
she tried, she says, and as for carrying
something in her mouth you have only
to watch her as she gives limitations to
be convinced that this is all rubbish.
She simply has marvellous development.
of the vocal chords, which has been de-
veloped by years of practice that began
when she was mere child and when
the threat muscles and vocal chords
were plant and flexible. The sounds
come straight from the throat, as was
remarked at the beginning of this ar
ticle, and as you can see very plainly
yourself if you are near by when the
limitations are given. You will then
very distinctly observe the throat fluttcr,
as does that OF a canary when he is soar
ing up in the high notes of some of his
dizziest trills.
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