The Cornell Reading-Courses 



PUBLISHED BY THE 

 NEW YORK STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY 



Entered as second-class matter at the post office at Ithaca, New York 



B. T. Galloway, Director A. R. Mann, General Editor 



COURSE FOR THE FARM HOME. MARTHA VAN RENSSELAER and FLORA ROSE, Supervisors 

 VOL. IV. No. 77 DECEMBER I, 1914 RURAL UFE SERIES 



SONGS THAT LIVE 



Rose Morgan 



The child who grown old finds himself in possession of the blest tra- 

 ditions and memories of the places and things of his childhood, enjoys 

 a legacy whose worth increases with the years, whose meaning unfolds 

 with life. Probably there is no form of early home influence more 

 enduring than the home song; and its power is continuous in propor- 

 tion to the place it occupied in that early home influence. The home 

 song, therefore, should be fundamentally a thing of truth. It should 

 not be the woven tinsel of fancy and sentimentality, but it should be 

 composed of words and melody that are coined from the heart's pure 

 gold. Such a song lives. There are few homes in this State where a 

 good song, if once it became installed, would not be appreciated, and 

 there is no home that would willfully cancel or lose the power of that song 

 as a memory-maker and as a character-builder. Unworthy songs have 

 crept in not because our home-making hearts are wrong but because our 

 home-making heads and hands are so full of the work of the insistent 

 present and the foreshadowing future that we do not often stop to weigh 

 the values in songs as in other things. 



We believe the song to be a character-making force. We believe that 

 there are better songs for the country school, the grange, and the occasional 

 country-life program than are ordinarily used in them. We believe that 

 there are better hymns for the country church and Sunday school services. 

 We believe, and it is this phase of the question we wish to deal with 

 especially, that the home is the natural center of that power for good which 

 we rest in song, and that there are better songs for it than the average 

 home of to-day provides. 



Already work has begun to meet the problem, which our weighing of the 

 values has revealed to us, touching song in the home. The conclusion 

 that the country home should, and can, and will, make a radical change 

 in the character of its songs is being reached by the consent and coopera- 

 tion of fathers, mothers, teachers, preachers, and others who are vitally- 

 interested. These men and women are working to the end that the 



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