Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1903-08-13
VOICES OF THE NIGHT.
Sounds Heard in the City in Summer,
When All the Windows
Are Open.

Now are they heard again, minus a
few old ones, perhaps, but with as many
new ones added" said Mr.. Gozzleton, re-
lates the New York Sun; 1.-The myriad
voices of the summer night, that come
to us at this season in the city, when
all the windows are open and people live
more or less out of doors.
we hear now once more the talking
of the people sitting on the steps across
the way, and the voices of the folk sit
ting at their open windows, and the
sound of the children playing in the
street.
Once 0 we hear the y~earning
notes of the ambitious violin player
who's aspirations so far exceed his art,
and the biff, biff, bang of many pianos,
and the soaring and the deep descend
ing notes of many singers.
And you hear the soft stunning of
the gentle guitar, and the notes of the
more metallic mandolin. And occasion
ally you hear some maternal voices call.
ing:
willie, you'll have to come in, now
"All familiar sounds, and not un
friendly to those long accustomed to
their annual recurrence.
of those that are missing one is the
sound of the melancholy flute. | can
remember we'll when no neighborhood
summer night symphony would have
seemed complete without a flute COM
ing in now and then, but as a matter
of fact / haven't heard a flute among
these summer night sounds for years.
think the flute must have gone out
of fashion; if we are not less sentimental
than we were we are less pensive, and
the flute was peculiarly a pensive in
strument, one commonly played in soil
tude.
Now, the fiddle is sympathetic, and
it may be sentimental, still, in ali its
wailings, it has more or less of vigor,
and we are likely to play the fiddle, not
alone, but with somebody, as with some
kind person struggling faithfully to
accompany us on the piano, dropping
whole bars and g%alloping wildly to keep
up with us when we slip a cog, or linger-
ing with dazed bewilderment over the
keys as We maunder, rapt, on the
strings. Yes, we still hear on summer
nights the chromatic yearning of the
fiddle, but no longer now the flute.
Nor do we hear in these days the
notes of the once every season familiar
key bugle; and the s%ingularly sharp and
frightfully fiat, the alternately violently
explosive and choking effects produced
by the amateur on that noble instrument
are sounds that | miss greatly. But I
haven't heard a key bugle in my neigh
borhood for years.
"And the same is true of that ripely
mellow instrument the French horn. I
don't know when I have heard an ANA
teur playing on a French horn. The
French horn seems to have gone, with
the key bugle, to join the melancholy
flute. A strange company.
"But, if we miss these. we have nov
new sounds to take their places, the
chug, chug, chug, of the hustling auto
scurrying through the block, and we
hear now the music of the automatic
piano players-of many of them, and the
sounds of many monographs, all pecul-
iarly modern.
eff some of the old voices have gone,
new mes have come, and so the grand
volume is not decreased; it is greater
now, if anything, than ever-the chorus
night, to be heard at this season in the
city, when all the windows are open"