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Page:Caine - An Angler at Large (1911).djvu/87

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Of a New Voice in the Valley

These mornings I fish to slow music, for the wind sits ever in the N.W. As I near the island the breeze takes on a new kind of voice. Its sigh becomes melodious; faint breaths of harmony intermingle with its whisper; its very lulls are tuneful. Where, hitherto, the cuckoos and the larks, the sheep and the cattle, the reeds and the poplars alone have raised their untutored voices, the meadows are vocal with arpeggios. The Spring Song of Mendelssohn is distinguishable, sometimes above, sometimes below that of the valley.

It is at this time of the day that my wife practises.

Is there something in the harp which makes it more akin to Nature than any other instrument? In solitudes such as these one rarely hears any human music. A piano may tinkle in a cottage (for we are so excessively educated nowadays), a travelling gramophone may stutter and wheeze from the high road, a mouth-organ may go by at the march, a hurdy-gurdy clatter out with im-

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