Franklin Square Song Collection - online songbook

200 favorite songs and Hymns for Schools, Homes Lyrics & Sheet Music

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	14	FRANKLIN-SQUARE SONG COLLECTION.
	I HAVE often seen piano-forte players and singers make such strange motions over instrument or song book, that I have wanted to laugh at them. " Where did our friend pick up these fine ecstatic airs?" I would say to myself. Then I would remember my lady in " marriage a la mode," and amuse myself thinking an affectation was the same thing in Hogarth's time as in our own. But one day I bought me a canary bird and hung it up in a cage at my window. By-and-by he found himself at home, and began to		pipe his little tunes; and there he was, sure enough,. swimming and waving about, with all the droopings-and liftings, languishing side-turnings of the head that I had laughed at. And now I should like to ask who taught him all this?—and me, through him, that the foolish head was not the one swinging itself from side to side and bowing and nodding over the music, but that other which was passing its shallow and self-satisfied judgment on a creature made of finei; clay than the stalwart frame which has so very long
	carried that same critical head upon its shoulders? Your former conversation has made me think re­peatedly what a number of beautiful words there are of which we never think of estimating the value, as there are of blessings. How carelessly, for example, do we (not we, but people) say "I am delighted to hear from you." No other ianguage has this beautiful ex­pression, which, like some of the most lovely flowers, loses its charm for want of close inspection. When Ii consider the deep sense of these very simple and		very common words, I seem to hear a voice coming trom afar through the air, intrusted to the care of the elements, for the nurture of niy sympathy.—LanJor. We often hear that this or that " is not worth an-old song." Alas! how few things are! What pre­cious recollections do some of them awaken ! What pleasurable tears do they excite! They purify the streams of life; they can delay it in its shelves and rapids; they can turn it back again to the soft cool moss amidst which its sources issue.—Landor.