Music is a language--a species of soft, dreamy speech which makes up for its lack of definiteness and precision by a beauty and harmony which can best be described as divine. Indeed, the ancient Greeks made music an all-inclusive term for the higher conceptions of life. Dancing, poetry, and even science were supposed to be under its sway, while the revolution of the heavenly bodies created that “music of the spheres” which entertained the gods. It would be better for mankind if this sentiment were more popular today. It is a narrow notion which confines the idea of musical harmony to the sounds produced by certain man-made instruments. Art which is restricted to workings in oil may be very pleasing but it is also very much limited. Music which is only interpreted on a violin or a piano falls far short of its grandest possibilities. To certain minds, the sighing of the wind through a Pine forest is more exquisitely expressive than a hundred breath-blown symphonies. When men cannot agree as to what is music among the sounds produced by their self-created instruments, dare they lightly ignore the many pleasing sounds which accompany the operations of Nature? To an American ear, Chinese singing sounds like squealing and a Fiji concert like a vociferous boiler factory. Yet a Chinaman or a Fiji Islander will leave our grandest operatic efforts in disgust, though he may be pleased with the preceding orchestral tunings. Where are we to set the standard? Is it not safest to fall back on Nature for our truest conceptions? The real sublimity of Nature lies in her vocalism. A soundless world would be greatly lacking in charm. The endearing noises of the woods and the fields often become so familiar that we fail to notice their individual merits. Yet they are there. Their sudden cessation would leave a terrible and unbearable gap. The woods are filled with gaily costumed feathered minstrels. The meadows are great emerald stages of song and fancy. The very grass roots are filled with little insect-fiddlers who chirp cheerfulness. Wind, water and rain all furnish a grand and beautiful accompaniment. Nature sings in the inharmonic scale, that is, a scale which takes in all intervals. Between the piano notes “C” and “D” lies a great space. They only represent halting points in the ascent of sound. Just as in the spectrum there are a hundred variations of shade between blue and green, so the cultivated human voice can hint at a hundred intervals between “C” and “D”. Nature uses all the tiny shades of sound there are, and certain humans have followed suit. To the Arabians, water “lisps in a murmuring scale.”