GRASSHOPPERS' SINGING CONTESTS 159 



For it cannot be doubted that his own music is the 

 greatest, the one all-absorbing motive and passion of his 

 little soul. This may seem to be saying too much to 

 attribute something of human feelings to a creature 

 so immeasurably far removed from us. Fantastic in 

 shape, even among beings invertebrate and unhuman, 

 one that indeed sees with opal eyes set in his green 

 goat-like mask, but who hears with his forelegs, breathes 

 through spiracles set in his sides, whipping the air 

 for other sense impressions and unimaginable sorts of 

 knowledge with his excessively long limber horns, or 

 antennae, just as a dry fly fisher whips the crystal 

 stream for speckled trout ; and, finally, who wears his 

 musical apparatus (his vocal organs) like an electric 

 shield or plaster on the small of his back. Nevertheless 

 it is impossible to watch their actions without regarding 

 them as creatures of like passions with ourselves. The 

 resemblance is most striking when we think not of what 

 we, hard Saxons, are in this cold north, but of the more 

 fiery, music-loving races in warmer countries. I re- 

 member in my early years, before the advent of 

 " Progress " in those outlying realms, that the ancient 

 singing contests still flourished among the gauchos of 

 La Plata. They were all lovers of their own peculiar 

 kind of music, singing endless decimas and coplas in 

 high-pitched nasal tones to the strum-strumming of a 

 guitar ; and when any singer of a livelier mind than his 

 fellows had the faculty of improvising, his fame went 

 forth, and the others of his quality were filled with emu- 



