h her there, for to me it seemed wonderfully
loud and riotous, but it was enough to make one in love with brass
toot-horns forever.

By and by something happened that just took the starch out of my New
England soul. There, in the midst of all those dashy singers, one
hundred and fifty men and women of the colored persuasion rose up in a
human thunder-cloud, and broke into that noble song of freedom, which is
a glory to one New England woman, and a glory to New England, for no
better thing has been written since the "Star Spangled Banner:"

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming Lord."

Oh, sisters! there mightn't have been the highest-priced music in those
colored voices, but the words are enough to wake up a dead warrior; they
went through and through me as the wind stirs a forest. It was something
to hear those dusky-faced freedmen chanting the glory of their own
emancipation--something better than music, I can tell you. But the
thrill of the thing was all gone when twenty thousand white people, with
drums, trumpets, fiddles, organs, everything and every creature that
could make a noise, thundered in, and bore all the sentiment off in a
wild whirlpool of thunder.

I do wish the white people would stop helping the colored population so
much. They only drown them out and stifle them. Why couldn't the
jubilant darkies be left to sing their own song, and rush on with old
John Brown without being whirlpooled up in twenty thousand white voices.
They could have stood their own without help, I reckon.

There was a little resting spell after the darkies sat down; then came a
great heaving crash and storm of music. Everything from a jew's-harp to
an organ was set a-going, and behind them thousands of women sent up
their voices amid a crash of anvils, the thunder of guns, and the
ringing of bells that plunged one headlong into a volcano of sound that
was neither music, nor thunder, nor an earthquake, but altogether a
stampede and whirlwind of noises that engulfed you, body and soul.
Ring--crash-bang--thunder rolling, rolling--oceans in tumult--whirlwinds
of sound--armies crashing together--the world at an end!

That was what it seemed like to me. Sisters, I haven't a nerve left in
my body; my temples throb, my heart feels as if it had been blown up
with brass horns. There is a drum beating in each temple. Oh, if I could
only hear a robin sing, or a brook in full flow--anything soft, and
low, and sweet--it would b