Twelve years of after-life cannot but weigh lighter in the balance of
recollection than half that number in very early youth. I think this
now, pondering upon the threshold of middle age with an enthusiasm
fixed and deepened by every change; but I did not think so the day to
which I shall defer my particular remembrances,--the day I had left
Germany forever,--except in dreams. There were other things I might
have left behind that now I carried to my home,--things themselves all
dreams, yet containing in their reminiscences the symbols of my every
reality. Eternity alone could contain the substance of those shadows;
that shore we deem itself to shadow, alone contains the resolution
into glory of all our longings, into peace of all our pain.
Such feelings, engendered by loneliness, took me by the very hand and
led me forwards that dreary December evening when I landed in England
last, having obtained all that was absolutely necessary to be made my
own abroad.
I have not tormented my reader or two with the most insignificant
mention of myself between this evening and a time some years before;
it would have been impracticable, or, if practicable, impertinent, as
I lived those after years entirely within and to myself. The sudden
desertion which had stricken Cecilia of her hero lord, and that
suspension of his presence which ensued, had no more power upon me
than to call out what was, indeed, demanded of me under such
circumstances,--all the persistency of my nature. And if even there
had been a complete and actual surrender of all her privileges by
professors and pupils, I should have been the last to be found there,
and I think that I should have played to the very empty halls until
ruin hungered for them and we had fallen together. As it happened,
however, my solitude was more actual than any I could have provided
for myself; my spirit retreated, and to music alone remained either
master or slave.
The very representative of music was no longer such to me; for when we
came together after that fatal midsummer no sign was left of
Anastase,--"a new king had arisen in Egypt, who knew not Joseph." To
him I ought, perhaps, to confess that I owed a good deal, but I cannot
believe it,--I am fain to think I should have done as well alone; but
there was that in the association and habitude of the place, that in
the knowledge of being still under the superintendence, however formal
and abstracted, of its head, that I could not, and would not, have
flung up the chances of its academical career.
It was, however, no effort to disengage myself from the spot, for any
notion of the presence of him I best loved was, alas! now, and had
been long, entirely dissociated from it. Not one smile from those fair
lips, not one ray from those awful eyes, had sunned the countenances
of the ever-studious throng. A monastery could not have been more
secluded from the incarnate presence of the Deity than were we in that
quiet institution from its distant director.
Let it not be imagined, at the same time, that we could have existed
in ignorance of that influence which was streaming--an "eastern
star"--through the country that contained him as a light of life,
which in the few fleeting years of my boyhood had garnered such
illustrious immortality for one scarcely past his own first youth. But
in leaving Germany I was leaving neither the name nor the fame of
Seraphael, except to meet them again where they were dearer yet and
brighter than in their cradle-land.
None could estimate--and, young as I yet was, I well knew it--the
proportion of the renown his early works had gained in this strange
country. The noblest attribute of race, the irresistible conception of
the power of race, had scarcely then received a remote encouragement,
though physiologists abounded; but, like our artists, they lacked an
ideal, or, like our politicians, "a man."
Still, whether people knew it or not, they insensibly worshipped the
perfect beauty whose development was itself music, and whose
organization, matchless and sublimated, was but the purest type of
that human nature on which the Divine One placed his signet, and which
he instituted by sharing, the nearest to his own. Those who did know
it, denied it in the face of their rational conviction, because it was
so hard to allow that to be a special privilege in which they can bear
no earthly part; for all the races of the earth cannot tread down one
step of that race, nor diminish in each millennium its spiritual
approximation to an everlasting endurance. Or, perhaps, to do them
justice, the very conviction was as dark to them as that of death,
which all must hold, and so few care to remind themselves of. At all
events, it was yet a whisper--and a whisper not so universally wafted
as whispers in general are--that Seraphael was of unperverted Hebrew
ancestry, both recognizant of the fact and auspicious in its
entertainment.
Many things affected me as changes when I landed at London Bridge,
for I had not been at home for three whole years, and was not prepared
to meet such changes, though aware of many in myself.
I cannot allude to any now, except the railway, which was the first I
had seen, and whose line to our very town, almost to our very house,
had been not six months completed. I shall never forget the effect,
nor has it ever left me when I travel; I cannot find it monotonous,
nor anything but marvel. It was certainly evening when I entered the
stupendous terminus, and nothing could have so adapted itself to the
architecture as the black-gray gloom, lamp-strung, streaming with
gas-jets.
Such gloom breathed deadly cold, presaging the white storm or the
icing wind; and it was the long drear line itself that drew my spirit
forth, as itself lonely to bask in loneliness, such weird, wild
insecurity seemed hovering upon the darkened distance, such a dream of
hopeless achievement seemed the space to be overpassed that awful
evening. As I walked along the carriage-line I felt this, although the
engine-fire glowed furiously, and it spit out sparks in bravery; but
the murmur of exhaustless power prevented my feeling in full force
what that power must really be.
It was not until we rolled away and left the lamps in their ruddy sea
behind us, had lost ourselves far out in the dark country, had begun
to rush into the very arms of night, that I could even bear to
remember how little people had told me of what steam-travelling by
land would prove in my experience. It seemed to me as if I, too, ought
to have changed, and to carry wings; the spirit pined for an
enfranchisement of its own as peculiar, and recalled all painfully
that its pinings were in vain.
A thousand chapters have been expended upon the delights of return to
home, and a thousand more will probably insure for themselves laudable
publicity. I should be an all-ungrateful wretch if I refused my single
_Ave_ at that olden shrine. I cannot quite forget, either, that none
of my wildest recollections out-dazzled its near brightness as I
approached; the poetic isolation of my late life, precious as it was
in itself, and inseparable from my choicest appreciation, seeming but
to enhance the genial sweetness of the reality in my reception.
Long before I arrived in that familiar parlor a presence awaited me
which had ever appeared to stand between my actual and my ideal
world,--it was that of my brother and earliest friend, dear Lenhart
Davy, who had walked out into the winter night expressly and entirely
to meet me, and who was so completely unaged, unchanged, and unalloyed
that I could but wonder at the freshness of the life within him, until
I remembered the fountains where it fed. He was as bright, as earnest,
as in the days of my infant faith; but there was little to be said
until we arrived at home.
Cold as was the season, and peculiarly susceptible as our family has
ever been to cold, the street-door positively stood ajar! and hiding
behind it was Margareth, oblivious of rheumatism and frost, to receive
her nursling. When she had pronounced upon my growth her enchanted
eulogy that I was taller than ever and more like myself, I was dragged
into the parlor by Davy, and found them all, the bloom of the
firelight restoring their faces exactly as I had left them. My mother,
as I told her, looked younger than myself,--which might easily be the
case, as I believe I was born grown up,--and Clo was very handsome in
her fashion, wearing the old pictorial raiment. My sister Lydia had
lately received preferment, and introduced me on the instant to her
prospects,--a gentlemanly individual upon the sofa, who had not even
concluded his college career, but was in full tilt for high
mathematical honors at that which I have heard called Oxford's rival,
but upon whose merit as a residence and Academe celestial I am not
competent to sit in judgment.
These worthies dismissed, I was at liberty to spend myself upon the
most precious of the party. They were Millicent and her baby, which
last I had never seen,--a lady of eighteen months, kept thus late out
of her cradle that she, too, might greet her uncle. She was a
delicious child,--I have never found her equal,--and had that
indescribable rarity of appearance which belongs, or we imagine it to
belong, to an only one. Carlotta--so they had christened her after
unworthy me--was already calling upon my name, to the solemn ecstasy
of Davy, and his wife's less sustained gratification.
I have never really seen such a sight as that sister and brother of
mine, with that only child of theirs. When we drew to the table,
gloriously spread for supper, and my mother, in one of her
old-fashioned agonies, implored for Carlotta to be taken upstairs,
Davy, perfectly heedless, brought her along with him to his chair,
placed on his knee and fed her, fostered her till she fell asleep and
tumbled against his shoulder, when he opened his coat-breast for her
and just let her sleep on,--calling no attention to her beauties in so
many words, certainly, but paying very little attention to anything
else; and at last, when we all retired, carrying her away with him
upstairs, where I heard him walking up and down his room, with a
hushing footstep, long after I had entered mine.
It was not until the next morning that I was made fully aware of
Davy's position. After breakfast, as soon as the sun was high enough
to prepare the frosty atmosphere for the reception of the baby, I
returned with Millicent and himself to their own home. I had been
witness to certain improvements in that little droll house, but a
great deal more had been done since my last visit.
For example, there was a room downstairs, built out, for the books,
which had accumulated too many; and over this room had Davy designed a
very sweet green-house, to be approached from the parlor itself. The
same order overlaid everything; the same perfume of cleanliness
permeated every corner; and it was just as well this was the case, so
jammed and choked up with all sorts of treasures and curiosities were
the little landing-place, the tiny drawing-room, the very bed-room and
_a half_, as Davy called my own little closet, with the little carven
bed's head. Everywhere his shadow, gliding and smiling silently,
though at the proper time she had plenty to say too, came Millicent
after him. Nor was the baby ever far behind; for at the utmost
distance might be glimpsed a nest of basket-work, lined with
blush-color, placed on a chair or two among the geraniums and myrtles,
and in that basket the baby lay; while her mamma, who only kept one
servant, made various useful and ornamental progresses through the
house.
While Davy was at home, however, Carlotta was never out of his arms,
or, at least, off his lap; she had learned to lie quite quiescently
across his knees while he wrote or read, making no more disturbance
than a dove would have done. I believe he was half-jealous because
when I took her she did not cry, but began to put her fingers into my
eyes and to carry my own fingers to her mouth. This morning we had her
between us when we began to talk, and it was with his eyes upon her
that Davy first said,--
"Well, Charles, you have told me nothing of your plans yet; I suppose
they are hardly formed."
"Oh, yes! quite formed,--at least as formed as they can be without
your sanction. You know what you wrote to me about,--your last
letter?"
"You received that extemporaneous extravaganza, then, Charles,--which
I afterwards desired I had burned?"
"I take that as especially unkind on your part, as I could not but
enter with the most eager interest into every line."
"Not unkind, though I own it was a little cowardly. I felt rather awed
in submitting my ideas to you when you were at the very midst of music
in its most perfect exposition."
"Oh! I did not quite discover that, Lenhart. There are imperfections
everywhere, and will be, in such a mixed multitude as of those who
press into the service of what is altogether perfect."
"The old story, Charlie."
"Rather the new one. I find it every day placed before me in a
stronger light; but it has not long held even with me. How very little
we can do, even at the utmost, and how very hard we must labor even to
do that little!"
"I am thankful to hear you say so, Charles, coming fresh from the
severities of study; but we are some few of us in the same mind."
"Then let us hold together; and this brings me to my purpose. I am not
going to settle in London, Lenhart,--that is a mistake of yours. I
will never leave you while I can be of any use."
"Leave me, Charlie? Ah! would that I could cherish the possibility of
your remaining here! But with your power and your promise of success,
who would not blame those who should prevent your appearance in
London?"
"I will never make my appearance anywhere, my dearest brother,--at
least not as you intend. I could have no objection to play anywhere if
I were wanted, and if any one cared to hear me; but I will never give
up the actual hold I have on this place. As much may be done here as
anywhere else, and more, I am certain, than in London. There is more
room here,--less strain and stress; and, once more, I will not leave
you."
"But how, my Charlie,--in what sense?"
"I will work along with you, and for you, while I work for myself. I
am young, very young, and, I daresay, very presumptuous in believing
myself equal to the task; but I should wish, besides being resident
professor, to devote myself especially to the organization of that
band of which you wrote, and which in your letter you gave me to
understand it is your desire to amalgamate with your class. You do not
see, Lenhart, that, young as I am, nothing could give me a position
like this, and that if I fail, I can but return to a less ambitious
course."
"There is no course, Charles, that I do not consider you equal to; but
I cannot reconcile it with my conscience to bind you to a service so
signal for my own sake,--it is a mere sketch of a Spanish castle I had
reared in an idle hour."
"We will raise a sure fame on solid foundations, Lenhart, and I do not
care about fame for its own sake. After all, you cannot, with your
musical electicism, prefer me to become mixed up in the horrible
struggle for precedence which, in London, degrades the very nature of
art, and renders its pursuit a misnomer."
"You have not given up one of your old prejudices, Charles."
"No, Davy. I feel we can do more acting together than either
separately, for the cause we love best and desire to serve. You know
me well, and that, whatever I have learned in my life abroad, no taste
is so dear to me as yours,--no judgment I should follow to the death
so gladly. Besides all the rest, which is made up of a good deal more
than one can say, I could never consent, as an instrumentalist, and as
holding that instrument to be part of myself, to infect my style with
whims and fashions which alone would render it generally acceptable. I
_must_ reserve what I musically believe as my musical expression, and
nothing can satisfy me in that respect but the development of the
orchestra."
"Poor orchestra! it is a very germ, a winter-seed at present, my
ever-sanguine Charlie."
"I am not sanguine; on the contrary, I am disposed to suspect
treachery everywhere, even in myself, and certainly in you, if you
would have me go to London, take fashionable lodgings, and starve
myself on popular precedents, among them that most magnificent one of
lionizing musical professors. No, I could not bear that, and no one
would care a whit for my playing as I _feel_. I should be starved out
and out. If you can initiate me a little yourself into your
proceedings, I think I shall be able to persuade you that I ought to
be only where my impulse directs me to remain."
Davy at this juncture deprived me of the baby, who had been munching
my finger all the time we talked; and when he had placed her in her
nest,--a portent of vast significance,--he enlightened me indeed to
the full, and we informed Millicent when she came upstairs; for
nothing could be done without asking her accord. It was greatly to my
satisfaction that she entirely agreed with me, and a great relief to
Davy, who in the plenitude of his delicate pride could hardly bear the
thought of suggesting anything to anybody, lest his suggestion should
unsteady any fixed idea of their own. Millicent cordially asserted
that she felt there was a more interesting sphere about them than she
could imagine to exist anywhere else; and perhaps she was right, for
no one could sufficiently laud the extirpation of ancient prejudices
by Davy's firm voice and ardent heart. I could not possibly calculate
at that moment the force and extent of his singular efforts, and their
still more unwonted effects in so short a time made manifest. I heard
of these from Millicent, who could talk of nothing else, to me, at
least, after Davy, ever anxious, had left us for his morning's
lessons, which occupied him in private, though not much more than
formerly, as his peculiar attention and nearly his whole time were
devoted more determinately than ever to the instruction and elevation
of the vocal institution he had organized.
"No one can tell, Charles," said Millicent, among other things, "how
heroically and patiently he has worked, rejecting all but the barest
remuneration, to bring all forward as he has succeeded in doing, and
has nobly done. You will say so when you hear, and you must hear,
to-morrow evening."
"I shall indeed feel strange, Millicent," I replied, "to sit at his
feet once more, and to feel again all that went through me in the days
when I learned of him alone. But I am very curious about another
friend of mine. I suppose you can tell me just as well as he."
"About Miss Benette, Charles?"
"Yes, and also little Laura."
"I know nothing; we know nothing of her or what she has been doing.
But you must have heard of Clara?"
"Not a word. I have been very quiet, I assure you."
"So much the better for you, Charles. But she has not lost your good
opinion?"
"She would have that wherever she went."
"I believe it. My husband has, of course, never lost sight of her; yet
it was not until the other day, and quite by accident, that we heard
of all she has become. A very old Italian stager, Stelli by name,
called on Lenhart the other day at the class, and after hearing
several of the pieces, asked him whether his pupil, Miss Benette, had
not belonged to it once on a time. He said, Yes; and finding that the
signor was acquainted with her, brought him home to dinner; and we
were told a great deal that it is very difficult to tell, even to you,
Charles. She must, however, be exactly what you always imagined."
"I should not only imagine, but expect, she will remain unaltered. I
do not believe such eyes could change, or the owner of such eyes."
"He says just so,--he says that she is an angel; he continued to call
her _angela_, _angela_, and could call her nothing else."
"Is she singing in Italy just now?"
"It is just that we asked him. You know she went to Italy for study,
and no one heard a word about her; she did not omit to write, but
never mentioned what she was doing. Only the third year she sent us
news of her _début_. This was but last May. The news was in a paper,
not in her letter. In her letter she only spoke of ourselves, and sent
us a present for baby,--such a piece of work, Charles, as you never
saw. I thought she would have quite given up work by that time. The
letter was a simple, exquisite expression of regard for her old
master; and when Lenhart answered it, she wrote again. _This_ letter
contained the most delicate intimation of her prosperous views. She
was entirely engaged at that time, but told us she trusted to come to
England an early month next year, for she says she finds, having been
to Italy, she loves England best."
"That is rather what I should have expected. She had not an Italian
touch about her; she would weary there."
"I should scarcely think so, Charles, for Stelli described her beauty
as something rose-like and healthful,--'fresher than your infant
there,' he said, pointing to baby; and from her style of singing grand
and sacred airs, she has been fancifully named, and is called
everywhere, 'La Benetta benedetta.'"[7]
"That strikes home to me very pleasantly, Millicent. She had something
blessed and infantine in her very look. I admire that sobriquet; but
those usually bestowed by the populace are most unmeaning. Her own
name, however, suits her best,--it is limpid like the light in her
eyes. There is no word so apt as 'clear' for the expression of her
soul. And what, Millicent, of her voice and style?"
"Something wonderful, no doubt, Charles, if she obtained an engagement
in the midst of such an operatic pressure as there was this year. I
hope she will do something for England too. We have not so many like
her that we can afford to lose her altogether."
"I know of not one, Millicent; and shall, if it be my good fortune to
see her, persuade her not to desert us; but Lenhart will have more
chance."
"La Benetta benedetta!" I could not forget it; it haunted me like the
words of some chosen song; I was ever singing it in my mind; it seemed
the most fitting, and the only not irreverent homage with which one
could have strewed the letters of her name,--a most successful
hieroglyph. Nor the less was I reminded of her when, on the following
evening, I accompanied my sister--who for once had allowed Clo to take
charge of her baby--to the place, now so altered since I left it,
where the vocal family united. We entered at the same door, we
approached the same room; but none could again have known it unless,
as in my case, he could have pointed out the exact spot on which he
had been accustomed to sit. The roof was raised, the rafters were
stained that favorite sylvan tint of Davy's, the windows lightly
pencilled with it upon their ground-glass arches, the walls painted
the softest shade of gray, harmonizing perfectly with the
purple-crimson tone of the cloth that covered seats and platform.
Alas! as I surveyed that platform I felt, with Davy, how much room
there was for increased and novel yet necessary organism in the
perfectibility of the system; for on that glowing void outspread,
where his slight, dark form and white face and _glancing_ hands alone
shone out, I could but dream of beholding the whole array, in
clustering companionship, of those mystic shapes that suggest to us,
in their varied yet according forms, the sounds that creep, that wind,
that pierce, that electrify, through parchment or brass or string.
In a word, they wanted a band very much. It would not have signified
whether they had one or not, had the class continued in its primitive
position, and in which its enemies would have desired it to
remain,--an unprogressive mediocrity. But as it is the nature of true
art to be progressive ever, it is just as ignorant to expect
shortcomings of a true artist as it would be vain to look for ideal
success amongst the leaders of musical taste, neither endowed with
aspiration nor volition. Now, to hear those voices rise, prolong
themselves, lean in uncorrupted tone upon the calm motet, or rest in
unagitated simplicity over a pause of Ravenscroft's old heavenly
verses, made one almost leap to reduce such a host to the service of
an appropriate band, and to institute orchestral worship there. I
could but remind myself of certain great works, paradises of musical
creation, from whose rightful interpretation we are debarred either by
the inconsistency with the chosen band of the selected chorus, or by
the inequality of the band itself. It struck me that a perfect dream
might here be realized in full perfection, should my own capabilities,
at least, keep pace with the demand upon them, were I permitted to
take my part in Davy's plan as we had treated of it to each other. I
told him, as we walked home together, a little of my mind. He was in
as bright spirits as at his earliest manhood; it was a favorable
moment, and in the keen December moonlight we made a vow to stand by
each other then and ever.
Delightful as was the task, and responsive to my inmost resolutions,
the final result I scarcely dared anticipate; it was no more easy at
first than to trace the source of such a river as the Nile. Many
difficulties darkened the way before me; and my own musical knowledge
seemed but as a light flung immediately out of my own soul, making the
narrow circle of a radiance for my feet that was unavailable for any
others. My position as Davy's brother-in-law gave me a certain hold
upon my pupils, but no one can imagine what suffering they weetlessly
imposed upon me. The number I began with, receiving each singly, not
at my own home, but in a hired room, was not more than eight, amateurs
and neophytes either,--the amateurs esteeming themselves no less than
amateurs, and something more; the neophytes chiefly connections of the
choral force, and of an individual stubbornness not altogether to be
appreciated at an early period. I could laugh to remember myself those
awful mornings when, after a breakfast at home which I could not have
touched had it been less delicately prepared, I used to repair to that
room of mine and await the advent of those gentlemen, all older than
myself except one, and he the most _presto_ in pretensions of the set.
The room was at the back and top of a house; and over the swinging
window-blind I could discern a rush now and then of a deep dark smoke,
and a wail, as of a demon sorely tried, would shrill along my nerves
as the train dashed by. The trains were my chief support during the
predominance of my ordeal,--they superinduced a sensation that was
neither of music nor of stolidity.
After a month or two, however, dating from the first week of February,
when, together with the outpeering of the first snowdrop from the
frost, I assumed my dignities, I discovered that I had gained a
certain standing, owing to the fact of my being aware what I was
about, and always attending to the matter in hand. Of my senior
pupils, one was immensely conversable, so conversable that until he
had disgorged himself of a certain quantity of chat, it was impossible
to induce him to take up his bow; another contemplative, so
contemplative that I always had to unpack his instrument for him, and
to send it after him when he was gone, in a general way; a third so
deficient in natural musicality that he did not like my playing! and
soon put up for a vacant oboe in the band of the local theatre, and
left me in the lurch. But desperately irate with them as I was, and
almost disgusted with my petty efforts, I made no show of either to
Davy, nor did they affect my intentions nor stagger my fixed
assurance. All my experiences were hoarded and husbanded by me to such
purpose on my own account that I advanced myself in exact proportion
to the calm _statu quo_ in which remained at present my orchestral
nucleus. My patience was rewarded, however, before I could have dared
to hope, by a steady increase of patronage during April and May,--in
fact, I had so much to do in the eight weeks of those two months that
my mother declared I was working too hard, and projected a trip for me
somewhere. Bless her ever benignant heart! she always held that
everybody, no matter who, and no matter what they had to do, should
recreate during three months out of every twelve! How my family, all
celebrated as they were for nerves of salient self-assertion, endured
my home-necessary practice, I cannot divine; but they one and all made
light of it, even declaring they scarcely heard that all-penetrating
sound distilled down the staircase and through closed parlor doors.
But I was obliged to keep in my own hand most vigorously, and
sustained myself by the hope that I should one day lead off my
dependants in the region now made sacred by voice and verse alone. It
was my habit to give no lessons after dinner, but to pursue my own
studies, sadly deficient as I was in too many respects, in the long
afternoons of spring, and to walk in the lengthening evenings, more
delicious in my remembrance than any of my boyish treasure-times. On
class-nights I would walk to Davy's, find him in a paroxysm of
anxiety just gone off, leaving Millicent to bemoan his want of
appetite and to devise elegant but inexpensive suppers. I would have
one good night-game with my soft-lipped niece, watch her mamma
unswathe the cambric from her rosy limbs, see the white lids drop
their lashes over her blue eyes' sleepfulness, listen to the breath
that arose like the pulses of a flower to the air, feel her sweetness
make me almost sad, and creep downstairs most noiselessly. Millicent
would follow me to fetch her work-basket from the little conservatory,
would talk a moment before she returned upstairs to work by the
cradle-side, would steal with me to the door, look up to the stars or
the moon a moment, and heave a sigh,--a sigh as from happiness too
large for heart to hold; and I, having picked my path around the
narrow gravel, smelling the fresh mould in the darkness, having
reached the gate, would just glance round to sign adieu; and not till
then would she withdraw into the warm little hall and close the door.
Then off I was to the class, to see the windows a-glow from the
street, to hear the choral glory greeting me in sounds like chastened
organ-tones, to mount, unquestioned, into the room, to find the
crimsoned seats all full, the crimson platform bare, save of that
quick, dark form and those gleaming hands. I sit down behind, and bask
luxuriously in that which, to me, is precious as "the sunshine to the
bee;" or I come down stoopingly a few steps, and taking the edge of a
bench where genial faces smile for me, I peep over the sheet of the
pale mechanic or rejoicing weaver, whose visage is drawn out of its
dread fatigue as by a celestial galvanism, and join in the psalm, or
mix my spirit in the soaring antiphon. Davy meets me afterwards; we
wait until everybody has passed out, we pack away the books, we turn
down the gas,--or at least a gentleman does, who appears to think it
an essential part of music that a supreme bustle should precede and
follow its celebrations, and who, locking the door after we attain the
street, tenders Davy the key in a perfect agony of courteous
patronage, and bows almost unto the earth. I accompany my brother
home, and Millicent and he and I sup together, the happiest trio in
the town. On other nights I sup at home, and after my walk, as I come
in earlier, and after I have given reports of Millicent and her spouse
and the baby,--also, whether it has been out this day (my mother
having a righteous prejudice against certain winds),--I sometimes play
to them such moving melodies as I fancy will touch them, but not too
deeply, and indulge in the lighter moods that music does not deny,
even to the uninitiated,--often trifling with my memory of old times as
they begin to seem to me, and, alas! have seemed many years already,
though I am young,--so young that I scarcely know yet how young I am.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] The blessed Benette.