MEADOW SINGERS. 05 



mical music, and however out of time the voices 

 may be for a short season, they inevitably be- 

 come synchronous or antiphonal, and to my ear 

 some large section of the grand chorus is always an- 

 tiphonal. This perfectly charming effect of musical 

 tones being tossed back and fourth, which I have 

 already referred to as exactly reproducing the open- 

 ing notes of the scherzo in Beethoven's Fifth Sym- 

 phony, is what Thoreau heard when he likened the 

 sound to " slumberous breathing," and what William 

 Hamilton Gibson called " a pulsating vesper chorus 

 ... a lullaby between the evening and the morning 

 twilights." Hawthorn describes it as an " audible 

 stillness," and makes his Canterbury poet think "that 

 if moonlight could be heard, it would sound just like 

 that." Of all the music in the moonlit field which 

 holds our ears entranced as we linger on the high- 

 way, this is the sweetest and best ; it is the cricket's 

 love song ! I often wonder why Irving did not 

 allude to it in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, be- 

 cause just near the bridge where the superstitious 

 schoolmaster " lost his head " the music of (E. nive-us 

 is rife from late August to the time when the days 

 grow cold.* 



* As the night when the schoolmaster rode abroad was a cloudy 

 one, possibly the tree crickets were not singing as usual ; a warm 

 moonlight night is the best one for cricket music. 



