Music of the Wild 



of exquisite Avriting lias made life easier for the 



family. A cricket walks unharmed Avhere a heavy 



The foot crushes a grasshopper or locust. The cricket 



Cricket ^^j^ ^^j^g hearth has made a welcome for all crickets, 



on my . ., . , . 



Hearth ^11*^1 tlie home boasting one that wui smg late m 

 the season feels that it has materialized evidence 

 of good cheer. I know how vainglorious we were 

 over a cahin cricket that once homed with us, how 

 all other sound ceased M'hen he heaan to sing, and 

 how we never failed to call the attention of vis- 

 itors to him, and how disappointed we were if he 

 did not perform \\'hen we Mere 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 nay library 

 shelves instead of ascending the chimney M'ith the 

 smoke, no one '^^'ould produce so niany fine volumes 

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

 a tone of his happy song should ruii 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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