The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



It would be impossible to describe more 

 delightfully the gradual development of 

 tastes and aptitudes in the dawn of life. 



The same freshness of impression and the 

 same affinity for natural objects will be 

 found in another recollection of the same 

 period: the recollection of " a certain har- 

 monica," whose music to the " ear of a child 

 of six " sounded as sweet and strange as that 

 of the frog whom he heard emitting his lim- 

 pid note in the neighbourhood of the soli- 

 tary farm as the last light of evening faded 

 from the heights. " A series of glass slips, 

 of unequal length, fixed upon two tightly- 

 stretched tapes, and a cork on the end of a 

 wire, which served as a striker " : such was 

 the instrument which some one brought the 

 child from the latest fair. " Imagine an un- 

 tutored hand striking at random upon this 

 key-board, with the most riotous unexpected- 

 ness of octaves, discords, and inverted har- 

 monies": such was the chiming of the bell- 

 ringer frogs on the sunken lanes of Malaval. 

 "As a song it had neither head nor tail; 

 but the purity of the sound was delightful. 

 How much more delightful, in the first radi- 

 ance of his spontaneous childhood, this little 

 scrap of a fellow who was beginning to play 

 his part in the great concert of the world, 



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