CHAPTER XI 



THE SONG AND THE SINGER 



Gene Stratton-Porter's "Song of the Cardinal" 

 is a kind of a winged epic and at the same time a 

 passionate protest against the man with a gun. 

 The man with a gun is consciously attempting to 

 kill a singer, but is quite unconscious of the fact 

 that if he succeeds he will also have eliminated a 

 song from the waning chorus of the summer time. 



This sad old world is in crying need of more 

 songs, but each year the number of singers grows 

 less and the volume of song fainter and fainter 

 and in places it has been swallowed up by all per- 

 vading silence. Song is something vast and great, 

 at large in nature, waiting for the voice that can 

 give it utterance and none can say that it was not 

 born close to that realm where angels have their 

 birth. Whether the utterance comes to us through 

 the medium of a bird or a human singer, the 

 uplift is identical and always in the direction of 

 the better things in life. 



On Howard Avenue, Biloxi, Miss., a few years 

 ago there was a fruit-stand, managed by an old 



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