“A legacy of song and story as impressive as Man’s should be the exclusive heritage of the elite,” said the Hornbill, with a patronizing, scholarly vanity. His own contribution was a tragic flop. It was artificial and stilted, and it provoked the hyena to gales of laughter. Almost instantly the hyena realized that he had betrayed himself, and could have bitten his tongue out. He had intended to improvise out of character, with a melodious persuasiveness, but the laughter was accepted by everyone as an ordeal that had to be endured and could now be dismissed as a _fait accompli_. “I’m glad that’s over,” breathed the Spoonbill, and went into a solo that made even the Hornbill shudder, despite their undoubted kinship as members of a team whose erudition and bald-domed superiority could not be challenged. It was now the turn of the big cats. The less said about their roars the better. The lion’s was fiercely belligerent, the tiger’s playful and beguiling, for contrary to popular belief the tiger is an amiable beast. But how could such formidable vocalisms conjure up visions Mozartian? Then it happened. A small, wiry figure arose and without even awaiting his turn lifted to his lips an incredible instrument of sound. It was fashioned of brass, and it flared at its tip like an earphone--the earphone of some pitifully ancient individual who has lost all touch with reality, and thinks of sound as a crutch. But the instrument was neither an earphone nor a crutch. The fox with his native sagacity and the Hornbill with his learning and knowledge of prehistory recognized it for what it was. It was a trumpet, and--it was golden. It never had been brass except in a wearisome literal sense which did not matter at all. So golden indeed was it that there came from it now, like a banner resplendently unfurled, an incomparable salute to the dawn. Never had man dared to dream of such music. It was as if Ulysses, lashed to his mast, had burst his bonds at last, and was with swift breast strokes approaching the island of his heart’s desire. For this was siren music. This was the music of the spheres. It was the music almost of Man dying young--Shelley in the blue Mediterranean, Bix Beiderbecke in canyons of steel, his last high imperishable note winging its way into the blue infinite. Almost, but not quite, it was Man music. By dint of long, patient practice it had simply taken on those shadings of absolute perfection--the “little more”--that are the hallmarks of genius in its lonely and solitary pilgrimage under the stars. Was it Eddington who first affirmed that if you set a monkey to pounding on a typewriter through all eternity he will eventually write Hamlet or King Lear? The statement has since found innumerable supporters who have paraphrased it in one way or another. But this was not Shakespeare. This was music, sensuous and unadorned.