While attending a gala picnic in Springfield, Massachusetts, Swedish-born opera singer Jenny Lind was asked to favor the joyous throng with a song. Standing in a wild-fern enclosure amid elms, white oaks, maples, she began an impromptu recital. Soon her listeners noted an unusual fluttering of wings...
They flew in from everywhere -- robins, bluebirds, orioles, cardinals... As Miss Lind filled the woodlands with mountain airs, the branches were podiums of celestial music; each branch became a rainbow of colors and the rainbow sang. Trembling, voiceless, she stood silent and threw a kiss, and another. The prima donna's face was wet with tears. She wept in sheer rapture...
Sources
Herbert Prochnow, Speakers' Treasury, p. 166
