Word: songfulness
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...discovered that a cricket, outheifetzing Heifetz, makes a full-tone slur downward from the fifth "D" above middle "C" in one-fiftieth of a second. It makes four of these notes, separated by infinitesimal pauses, at each stroke of its bow. The cricket's stridor is a love song, produced only by the adult male. When the bemused female approaches he tones down his serenade, strokes her with lustful antennae...
Some people find the cricket's song strangely soothing. To other people the insect is an unredeemed pest. Besides making a noise, which it hushes when irate insomniacs turn on lights to search it out, the cricket eats clothes, rugs, furniture, meat, bread, vegetables...
...different is the cricket's status in Italy, North Africa and Japan, where it is prized for its song, kept in cages. In China the cricket comes into its own. Chinese like its monotonous chirping, which resembles their own music, and think it lucky. Twelve centuries ago palace ladies were keeping crickets by their bedsides in golden cages. Peasants made tiny bamboo cricket cages which they carried in their bosoms or swung from their girdles. During the Sung dynasty (A. D. 960-1280) Chinese began encouraging their crickets to fight each other...
Married-Gwendolyn, only daughter of famed Tenor John McCormack; and Edward Pyke, Liverpool businessman; in London. Hordes of Londoners pressed into Brompton Oratory to hear Tenor McCormack sing the Ave Maria ("the song of my life...
...grasping public utilities. But whatever happens, you may rest assured that California, as usual, will continue to be the beauty spot of the earth, visited by millions of tourists yearly who will spend their money for California home-products and California's incomparable sunshine." Broadway produces a song...