Music of the Wild 



of exquisite writing has made life easier for the 

 family. A cricket walks unharmed where a heavy 

 The foot crushes a grasshopper or locust. The cricket 

 Cricket on one l iea rth has made a welcome for all crickets, 

 Hearth an d the home boasting one that will sing late in 

 the season feels that it has materialized evidence 

 of good cheer. I know how vainglorious we were 

 over a cabin cricket that once homed with us, how 

 all other sound ceased when he began to sing, and 

 how we never failed to call the attention of vis- 

 itors to him, and how disappointed w r e were if he 

 did not perform when we were expecting he would. 

 A cricket makes fine, cheery music, the natural ac- 

 companiment to the snapping crackle of an open 

 wood-fire, which is the only rational source of heat 

 in a real home. I could write a larger book than 

 this on fire forms, flame colors, and the different 

 tints of smoke ascending from logs of various 

 trees as they burn in my fireplace. If my dreams 

 as I watch the flames materialized on my library 

 shelves instead of ascending the chimney with the 

 smoke, no one would produce so many fine volumes 

 as I. The cricket is so a part of the dreams that 

 a tone of his happy song should run through all 

 of them. 



The wings are the musical instruments, and 



with these crickets obtain so closely to the sound 



of a voice that people always speak and write of 



them as "singing," though they really are instru- 



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