1494 The Cornell Reading-Courses 



but little folks to sleep; then it is that all the accomplishments of her girlhood are as 

 nothing compared with one simple song that lulls a tired baby to sleep. There is 

 something soothing to the child in the mother's voice at any time, and it instinctively 

 loves the melody of a song; so, girls, while you can, think of the mine of wealth you 

 may lay up for the childi'en that may one day come with their smiles and their kisses 

 to brighten the way. 



The last is by the author and poet, Richard Le GalHenne, author of An 

 Old Country House. This extract is from his A Defense of Old Songs 

 (Harper's Magazine, December, 191 2). Young men in the country may 

 also defend old songs. The song life of the farm home that is about to 

 be established can be made the best illustration of such defense. In Mr. 

 Le Gallienne's a.rticle he tells us that he found a songbook on the piano in 

 the Connecticut farmhouse where he was living: 



The book itself is not old, being, in fact, a cheap paper-backed collection made com- 

 paratively recently, such as can be bought in any music-store; and it is, therefore, the 

 more significant, for it is thus not merely reminiscent of the tastes of the past, but 

 representative of the tastes of the present, too, as it bears witness also to the remarkable 

 longevity of popular favorites. It would seem, indeed, that when a song possesses the 

 peculiar kind of vitality to capture the popular heart or the popular fancy, it can never 

 quite lose its hold; but, indeed, goes on strengthening it, generation after generation, by 

 the cumulative power of association. 



The fashions of human feeling change not, and though new forms of its expression 

 naturally arise and have their hour, man in his realer moments is best pleased by those 

 old forms, consecrated and endeared by familiar usage, the words he is most at home 

 with, and the tunes he used to whistle when a boy. And it must be a " superior," 

 sophisticated eye, indeed, that would not soften and fill as it glanced over the titles 

 alone of the book of " home songs '.' that is before me as I write. Take the first 

 dozen, just as they come: 



Alice, Where Art Thou? Annie Laurie. Auld Lang Syne. Be Kind to the Loved 

 Ones at Home. Ben Boll. The Blue Bells of Scotland. The Blue Juniata. By the 

 Sad Sea Waves. The Campbells are Coming. Come Back to Erin. Comin' Thro' 

 the Rye. Darby and Joan. 



What doors of memory fly open with each quaint old-fashioned name. 



* * * * Old Folks at Home, the magnetism of the melody is undeniable, but con- 

 sider, so to say, the emotional voltage of the mere subject-matter of the words. 

 There is the advantage for the writer of popular songs. The very words he tises — 

 "Home" — "Mother" — "Country" — are poems in themselves, traditionally 

 charged with human feeling. They are things rather than words, conveying their 

 meaning as directly, and awakening as immediate response, as a national flag. * * * 



Yet man's feelings are crude, or at least strong and simple when he feels at all ; and it 

 is hard to imagine such a theme, say, as a man's love for his mother — perhaps the 

 most favorite theme of these popular songs — treated otherwise than with the heart- 

 felt directness of simple affection; though, doubtless, there are some who would con- 

 sider that the proper way to treat a mother in art is Whistler's way, merely dispas- 

 sionately, as a " study " or an " arrangement." 



The world at large, however, has decided in favor of Eliza Cooke's method in The 

 Old Ar,,ichair. " Reeking sentimentality! Maudlin emotionalism!" one can hear 

 some one — our old sophomoric selves, maybe — exclaim; yet one may well ask how 

 an excess of sentiment or emotion is possible on such a subject as a mother's memory, 

 or what object could more naturally focus our wistful affection than an old chair in 

 which a beloved mother so long has sat and now sits no more. Here surely is an occasion 

 on which the human heart may let itself go in unrestrained simplicity of its sorrow, 

 however naive and unlettered in its expression. 



Often we refer to the preacher, the teacher, and the author, as we have 

 just done, for a formal answer to a question regarding the moral and 



