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within that the pulsating lullaby of the evening crickets used to
make itself most distinctly heard, - so that I well remember I used

to think that the purring of these little creatures, which mingled
with the batrachian hymns from the neighboring swamp, WAS PECULIAR

TO SATURDAY EVENINGS. I don't know that anything could give a
clearer idea of the quieting and subduing effect of the old habit

of observance of what was considered holy time, than this strange,
childish fancy.

Yes, and there was still another sound which mingled its solemn
cadences with the waking and sleeping dreams of my boyhood. It was

heard only at times, - a deep, muffled roar, which rose and fell,
not loud, but vast, - a whistling boy would have drowned it for his

next neighbor, but it must have been heard over the space of a
hundred square miles. I used to wonder what this might be. Could

it be the roar of the thousand wheels and the ten thousand
footsteps jarring and trampling along the stones of the neighboring

city? That would be continuous; but this, as I have said, rose and
fell in regular rhythm. I remember being told, and I suppose this

to have been the true solution, that it was the sound of the waves,
after a high wind, breaking on the long beaches many miles distant.

I should really like to know whether any observing people living
ten miles, more or less, inland from long beaches, - in such a

town, for instance, as Cantabridge, in the eastern part of the
Territory of the Massachusetts, - have ever observed any such

sound, and whether it was rightly accounted for as above.
Mingling with these inarticulate sounds in the low murmur of

memory, are the echoes of certain voices I have heard at rare
intervals. I grieve to say it, but our people, I think, have not

generally agreeable voices. The marrowy organisms, with skins that
shed water like the backs of ducks, with smooth surfaces neatly

padded beneath, and velvet linings to their singing-pipes, are not
so common among us as that other pattern of humanity with angular

outlines and plane surfaces, and integuments, hair like the fibrous
covering of a cocoa-nut in gloss and suppleness as well as color,

and voices at once thin and strenuous, - acidulous enough to
produce effervescence with alkalis, and stridulous enough to sing

duets with the katydids. I think our conversational soprano, as
sometimes overheard in the cars, arising from a group of young

persons, who may have taken the train at one of our great
industrial centres, for instance, - young persons of the female

sex, we will say, who have bustled in full-dressed, engaged in loud
strident speech, and who, after free discussion, have fixed on two

or more double seats, which having secured, they proceed to eat
apples and hand round daguerreotypes, - I say, I think the

conversational soprano, heard under these circumstances, would not
be among the allurements the old Enemy would put in requisition,

were he getting up a new temptation of St. Anthony.
There are sweet voices among us, we all know, and voices not

musical, it may be, to those who hear them for the first time, yet
sweeter to us than any we shall hear until we listen to some

warbling angel in the overture to that eternity of blissful
harmonies we hope to enjoy. - But why should I tell lies? If my

friends love me, it is because I try to tell the truth. I never
heard but two voices in my life that frightened me by their

sweetness.
- Frightened you? - said the schoolmistress. - Yes, frightened me.

They made me feel as if there might be constituted a creature with
such a chord in her voice to some string in another's soul, that,

if she but spoke, he would leave all and follow her, though it were
into the jaws of Erebus. Our only chance to keep our wits is, that

there are so few natural chords between others' voices and this
string in our souls, and that those which at first may have jarred

a little by and by come into harmony with it. - But I tell you this
is no fiction. You may call the story of Ulysses and the Sirens a

fable, but what will you say to Mario and the poor lady who
followed him?

- Whose were those two voices that bewitches me so? - They both
belonged to German women. One was a chambermaid, not otherwise

fascinating. The key of my room at a certain great hotel was
missing, and this Teutonic maiden was summoned to give information

respecting it. The simple soul was evidently not long from her
mother-land, and spoke with sweet uncertainty of dialect. But to

hear her wonder and lament and suggest, with soft, liquid
inflexions, and low, sad murmurs, in tones as full of serious

tenderness for the fate of the lost key as if it had been a child
that had strayed from its mother, was so winning, that, had her

features and figure been as delicious as her accents, - if she had
looked like the marble Clytie, for instance, - why, all can say is

-
[The schoolmistress opened her eyes so wide, that I stopped short.]

I was only going to say that I should have drowned myself. For
Lake Erie was close by, and it is so much better to accept

asphyxia, which takes only three minutes by the watch, than a
MESALLIANCE, that lasts fifty years to begin with, and then passes

along down the line of descent, (breaking out in all manner of
boorish manifestations of feature and manner, which, if men were

only as short-lived as horses, could be readily traced back through
the square-roots and the cube-roots of the family stem on which you

have hung the armorial bearings of the De Champignons or the De la
Morues, until one came to beings that ate with knives and said

"Haow?") that no person of right feeling could have hesitated for a
single moment.

The second of the ravishing voices I have heard was, as I have
said, that of another German woman. - I suppose I shall ruin myself

by saying that such a voice could not have come from any
Americanized human being.

- What was there in it? - said the schoolmistress, - and, upon my
word, her tones were so very musical, that I almost wished I had

said three voices instead of two, and not made the unpatriotic
remark above reported. - Oh, I said, it had so much WOMAN in it, -

MULIEBRITY, as well as FEMINEITY; - no self-assertion, such as free
suffrage introduces into every word and movement; large, vigorous

nature, running back to those huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but
subdued by the reverential training and tuned by the kindly culture

of fifty generations. Sharp business habits, a lean soil,
independence, enterprise, and east winds, are not the best things

for the larynx. Still, you hear noble voices among us, - I have
known families famous for them, - but ask the first person you meet

a question, and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, metallic,
matter-of-business clink in the accents of the answer, that

produces the effect of one of those bells which small trades-people
connect with their shop-doors, and which spring upon your ear with

such vivacity, as you enter, that your first impulse is to retire
at once from the precincts.

- Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child I saw and heard
in a French hospital. Between two and three years old. Fell out

of her chair and snapped both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient,
gentle. Rough students round her, some in white aprons, looking

fearfully business-like; but the child placid, perfectly still. I
spoke to her, and the blessed little creature answered me in a

voice of such heavenlysweetness, with that reedy thrill in it
which you have heard in the thrush's even-song, that I hear it at

this moment, while I am writing, so many, many years afterwards. -
C'EST TOUT COMME UN SERIN, said the French student at my side.

These are the voices which struck the key-note of my conceptions as
to what the sounds we are to hear in heaven will be, if we shall

enter through one of the twelve gates of pearl. There must be
other things besides aerolites that wander from their own spheres

to ours; and when we speak of celestialsweetness or beauty, we may
be nearer the literal truth than we dream. If mankind generally

are the shipwrecked survivors of some pre-Adamitic cataclysm, set
adrift in these little open boats of humanity to make one more

trial to reach the shore, - as some grave theologians have
maintained, - if, in plain English, men are the ghosts of dead

devils who have "died into life," (to borrow an expression from
Keats,) and walk the earth in a suit of living rags which lasts

three or four score summers, - why, there must have been a few good
spirits sent to keep them company, and these sweet voices I speak

of must belong to them.
- I wish you could once hear my sister's voice, - said the

schoolmistress.
If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one, - said I.

I never thought mine was anything, - said the schoolmistress.
How should you know? - said I. - People never hear their own

voices, - any more than they see their own faces. There is not
even a looking-glass for the voice. Of course, there is something

audible to us when we speak; but that something is not our own
voice as it is known to all our acquaintances. I think, if an

image spoke to us in our own tones, we should not know them in the
least. - How pleasant it would be, if in another state of being we

could have shapes like our former selves for playthings, - we
standing outside or inside of them, as we liked, and they being to

us just what we used to be to others!
- I wonder if there will be nothing like what we call "play," after

our earthly toys are broken, - said the schoolmistress.
Hush, - said I, - what will the divinity-student say?

[I thought she was hit, that time; - but the shot must have gone
over her, or on one side of her; she did not flinch.]

Oh, - said the schoolmistress, - he must look out for my sister's
heresies; I am afraid he will be too busy with them to take care of

mine.
Do you mean to say, - said I, - that it is YOUR SISTER whom that

student -
[The young fellow commonly known as John, who had been sitting on

the barrel, smoking, jumped off just then, kicked over the barrel,
gave it a push with his foot that set it rolling, and stuck his

saucy-looking face in at the window so as to cut my question off in
the middle; and the schoolmistress leaving the room a few minutes

afterwards, I did not have a chance to finish it.
The young fellow came in and sat down in a chair, putting his heels

on the top of another.
Pooty girl, - said he.

A fine young lady, - I replied.
Keeps a first-rate school, according to accounts, - said he, -

teaches all sorts of things, - Latin and Italian and music. Folks
rich once, - smashed up. She went right ahead as smart as if she'd

been born to work. That's the kind o' girl I go for. I'd marry
her, only two or three other girls would drown themselves, if I

did.
I think the above is the longest speech of this young fellow's

which I have put on record. I do not like to change his peculiar
expressions, for this is one of those cases in which the style is

the man, as M. de Buffon says. The fact is, the young fellow is a
good-hearted creature enough, only too fond of his jokes, - and if

it were not for those heat-lightning winks on one side of his face,
I should not mind his fun much.]

[Some days after this, when the company were together again, I
talked a little.]

- I don't think I have a genuinehatred for anybody. I am well
aware that I differherein from the sturdy English moralist and the

stout American tragedian. I don't deny that I hate THE SIGHT of
certain people; but the qualities which make me tend to hate the

man himself are such as I am so much disposed to pity, that, except
under immediate aggravation, I feel kindly enough to the worst of

them. It is such a sad thing to be born a sneaking fellow, so much
worse than to inherit a hump-back or a couple of club-feet, that I

sometimes feel as if we ought to love the crippled souls, if I may
use this expression, with a certain tenderness which we need not

waste on noble natures. One who is born with such congenital
incapacity that nothing can make a gentleman of him is entitled,

not to our wrath, but to our profoundest sympathy. But as we


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