Show RunningWater Notes We readily consent that the MUBGS had their birth and rearing in the neighborhood of certain springs and streams This was a wise provsirn for their subsequent musical educa cation since it was intended no doubt that they should gather tho rudiments from such congenial sources The Greeks left no account as they well might have done of the technical drill pursued by the nine sieters However we may suppose that they wrote ofl their scores from the fluent dictation of their cascades and Btreims and that they scanned or aungU all such exercises by the laws of liquid quantity and accent Per haps at the same time tho better to measure the feet and mark the csesu ral pauses they danced as they sang over the rippled surface of the stream Nor did the Muses alone love springs and running water but would seem that the philharmonic societies of their descendents have bad their haunts In like localities or was it mere chance tbat Hosier should have lived by the river Melee hence Meleaigenes that Plato should have his retirement where IlJisias rolls His whispering stream or that Shakespeare to all time should be the Sweet Swan of Avon Consider the vocabularv of the water it has its open vowels ita mutes labials and subvocals and if one listen atten well in a little repetend of favorite syllables and alliterations Like Demosthenes it knows the use and advantage of peb blee and has by this simple experiment experi-ment co purified its utterance that nowhere else ia Nnlura idiom spoken so finely Whs taint of ono atopoe3 etio words we have caught from its talkative lips Babbling purling murmuring gurgling are some of the adjectives borrowei from this vernacular vernac-ular and soma have even heard the chuckling brooksian expression which well describes a certain confi dential sotto voce gayety and self rontent I have often heard in the parley of the water November Atlan tic I |