There they stand in the darkness, with the salt sea spray in their faces, and the tarred rope in their hands, holding the long and ponderous yard against the mast, until their rollicking song reaches the hoisting turn, and all their sinews are strung to the harmony of a unison to the telling pull.
Everywhere and in all ages, the week-day music of the world has been the songs of labour by men and women at their toil, and by the birds of heaven singing to them overhead and around them.
And no ear drinks with richer relish the melodies of these outside songsters――no home more safe and welcome does the swallow find than under the eaves of the poor man’s cottage.
Go through the densest courts and lanes of Spitalfields, and see what a companionship of bird life the silk weavers maintain in their garrets, even when the loaf is too small for their children.
The papers recently published a touching and beautiful illustration of the fondness which workingmen show for singing birds.
When the first English lark was taken to Australia by a poor widow, the stalwart, sunburnt, hard-visaged gold diggers would come down from their pits on the Sabbath to hear it sing the songs they loved to listen to at home in their childhood.
An instance still more interesting has been noted lately in connection with one of the large manufacturing towns in North Wales.
The men, women, and children employed in the factories, not many times a week heard the lark’s song, or the music of the free birds of heaven.
These loved the bright air and the green fresh meadows too well to sing many voluntaries in the smoky atmosphere of the furnace and factory.
Thus the cheap concerts of these songsters cost the operatives of the mills long walks beyond the brick and mortar mazes of the town.
But thousands thought them cheap at that price.
“Ah! I mind the time when I sang that very song in this room, more than twenty years agone,” said Nat.
“Aye――better than that,” said a middle-aged man. “It was on the very night that Lord Ethalwood lost his son――the last on ’em as was left. He aint bin the same man since.”
“Well, his lordship,” returned the other――“the owner of the foine estate on the top of the hill, called Broxbridge Hall.”