THE beautiful custom of decorating the graves of the soldiers should have its lessons for the schools. Decoration day committees may secure an ample supply of bouquets if they will adopt the plan of certain Grand Army Posts in the larger cities. Instead of requesting donations of flowers from the citizens at large, all the schools of the village, town, or city, may be enlisted in the good work of providing them, representatives of the committees visiting the various schools some days before the flowers are wanted, and speaking of the propriety of the children's doing what they can to furnish them. The boys and girls will at once be interested. The bouquets may be brought to the schools on the afternoon preceding Decoration Day, to be called for by local committees. Thousands of bouquets may thus be obtained. The entire locality is laid under contribution for flowers, and in the most effective way possible. The children-each boy or girl-has done something, or has decided that he or she can do nothing, for the observance of the day-and thus has come into personal contact with the thought of gratitude due, and honor paid, to the patriotic dead. The teachers call the attention of their schools to the meaning of the day, under circumstances most favorable to producing a lasting impression. The story of the war is retold; the meaning of the great struggle is taught as the lesson of the hour; and in every way the result is profitable to all. "What we would have in the community we must put into the schools." TONES and semitones mark the ordinary intervals in music. Many Italian, Spanish and other singers in Southern Europe are, however, able to sing not only semitones but also quarter tones, thus producing greater brilliancy in execution. Ability to divide the semitone is not possessed by the Germans, the Russians, the Scotch, the English, the Irish, and other singers of Northern Europe. Their vocal organs will not produce these quarter intervals. To offset this, however, these northern singers have a power of expression that far surpasses the southerner, both in depth and sweetness. The brilliant runs of the Italian operatic singer may electrify his audience; but it is the melody, whether sweet or sad, of the German, or Russian, or English folk-song, that reaches the heart and makes men better. The voice trembles with suppressed emotion; tears fill the eyes; the soul seems stirred to its depths; an impression is made and a glad memory left that never can be lost or forgotten. The folk-song is a branch of music sui generis-altogether different from ordinary operatic airs-and it has been too much neglected. The THE ORGAN.-A grand organ is a work of art in a high sense, and represents, also, a long succession of ingenious triumphs over mechanical difficulties. When you listen to its smooth and rich combinations of tones, blending admirably into a massive surge of harmony, you should have a sense of the complicated apparatus, and the slowly-mounting triumphs of skill in its arrangement, by which the inspiring result is gained. The ordinary conception of an organ is compounded simply of a bellows, some pipes, and keys. Of the mysteries of its construction we are, most of us, as ignorant as we are of its history. If we could know how these numerous pipes are touched "to fine issues," -the skill with which the all-animating air, which they expire in melody, is supplied to them from the bellows, through the wind-trunks, into the air-chests, by the further aid of grooves, and sound-boards, and tables, and sliders, and then by what cunning economy of pressure and spring the proper amount of breath is driven through each tube that is to be wakened into song; if we could know how the three organs of which every grand instrument is composed-the pedal, the choir organ, and the swell-are wrought into unity, how, by couplings, they can be made to play together at a single touch, and how the manuals and pedals are prepared by dextrous machinery for perfect action; if we could learn by what repeated and nice experi- | of troubles which attend complicated machinery, ments the best woods and metals had been discovered for the structure of pipes, and the finest combinations of the two kinds, and their proper length for different notes, and for the best tones, and how new stops had been invented to increase the compass and refine the voice of the instrument, and what delicacy of taste is required, and has been exhibited, in blending and balancing the songs of the different stops into a smooth chorus, kindred with the skill a master shows in harmonizing the colors of a picture to a proper tone; if we could, further, be made sensible of the patient talent that has been expended in contests with scores and, beyond these, could be made aware of the difficulties that have been grappled, and the genius that has been put to use, in connection with the whole subject of temperament, tuning, and pitch of an organ, we should see that we get our noble instrument, as we get all the richest blessings of civilization, out of the benefactions of centuries; and look upon it as a sign and summary of the dreams of scores of artists, and the adroitness of countless artisans; and the first lesson its music would breathe into our souls would be a new rendering of the words of Jesus," Other men labored, and ye have entered into their labors."-Thos. Starr King. |