TOUCHING A CHORD 303 



me suspiciously, and at any movement I made it 

 would rush off and not return for several hours. 

 Probably someone had attempted its capture, so that 

 it looked on all of us who have the human form as 

 dangerous beings. This uncomfortable state of things 

 lasted for over a year; then one day it occurred to 

 me to mimic the cooing of a woodpigeon: this 

 instantly attracted its attention, and from that 

 moment it began to lose its suspicion and allowed 

 me to go to the window and watch it feeding; then, 

 in a short time, it actually began coming into the 

 room to feed on the table. 



Again, take the case of the great green grasshopper, 

 the most musical of our insects. You may try him 

 with a variety of sounds, and whistle and sing your 

 sweetest and play the flute or fiddle and he will pay 

 no attention; but try him with a zither, running a 

 finger-nail over the strings, and instantly he is all 

 attention, listening and moving his long antennae 

 about, and presently he will start playing on his 

 zither in response to yours. 



You have come down to his world, his species, and 

 touched a chord in his grasshopper heart. And as 

 with grasshoppers so it is with man. We are interested 

 above all things in ourselves; in the sound that 

 touches a chord in us, and the chord may be touched 

 by instrument or voice. They are, so far as expression 

 goes, one and the same, and the closer we look at 

 them the more indivisible they seem. When Izaak 

 Walton praises the sweet music the nightingale 

 makes with *'his little instrumental throat" he is 



