Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-07-02
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

accent on the first syllable, too, If you
want TO. It at least Is good American
csc, and every one will understand what
you are talking about.
There Is vim, vigor and q certain
sweetness even In a well tuned steam
calliope, properly played by man who
understands both music and steam en-
gines.
From the white-fringed tips of the
pipes issues world Of melody which
even grandpap has no difficulty hearing.
X 4 4
The thrush's song has plenty of
steam" behind 1t, too. IT'S a wild wood
strain, shaming the feeble pipings Of
the domestic canary.
When a thrush comes into your
neighborhood, as he will II you have
some good trees. every one knows he is
around.
what Is that bird?" some one asks.
His song has personality, and all the
bird writer's unite in praising 1t.
AS a matter of fact, 1t Is almost the
only bird we have heard this Summer
with any real musical pattern to his
composition.
Most birds are so busy clucking and
chirping and mixing up gurgles with
their songs that it Is difficult to deter
mine just what they are attempting to
tell you.
With the thrush it Is different. He
clucks bit, too, but his main theme is
his main concern, and he never forgets
it.
His notes would be blasts were it not
Tor a certain native sweetness which his
ancestors caught thousands of years
ago.
They handed those notes down I'M
NhQnOad until fndau
just as Adam must have in the Garden
of Eden. Birds are conservative little
beggars.
We believe that some musician, who
also would have to be a bird fancier,
should make serious attempt to put
down the bird songs in musical notation.
1t would be task, no doubt of that;
but 1t might be done, at least to some
extent. OF course, no instrument made
by hands would give the exact coloring
OF birds throat.
Perhaps flute would come the near
est to doing this, and few bird lovers
possess flutes. They may have pianos,
or violinS, or mandolins, or guitars. or
ban1oes, but that is as far as they go.
NOW. the song of the thrush on a
piano Is not exactly the song of the
thrust. Even the violin Is not exactly
thrush-like. The mandolin would be an
approximation merely, and the banjo
would be even less exact.
The bird lover, however, even II his
instrument were very poor for the par
t1cular purpose, would have this salts
factlon-that he was perpetrating no
outrage on the birds by attributing to
them word, and thus thoughts and SEN
timentS, which they by no means pos
sess.
That IS the real crime Of the attempt
to put bird songs into the words of any
language. With few exceptions. some
OF which have been noted, the ATTEMPT
Is verse than futile.
II there is any created thing which
Is less like humanity than a bird-any
blro-We do not know what it Is. We
see our kinship with monkeys, with
dogs, with cats, with hogs, wolves.
foxes, but never with eagles, condors.
mocHngbirds. thrushes, sparrows. car
dinalS, bluebirds. (And, by the wav.
who has seen bluebird this year?)
Birds have quick little eyes: they eat.
as man has always done; they fly. as
he Is beginning 70 do well; but there the
resemblance ends, except that they live
and become i'll or injured and die the
death.
In all else they are alien to us, and
1t will do little good to pretend that
their wood notes wild make words or
sense in any linguistic way. HappiIv
for the birds, their songs are senseless
in our little definitions of sense. They
arc beautiful, no doubt to the birds as
well as to us, and perhaps that is
enough.