nd the singing women! Once in a while,
in the course of my life, I have found myself in the midst of a tulip-bed
of full-dressed, handsome women in all their glory, and when some one
among them has shaken her gauzy wings, and sat down before the piano, and
then, only giving the keys a soft touch now and then to support her
voice, has warbled some sweet, sad melody intertwined with the longings
or regrets of some tender-hearted poet, it has seemed to me that so to
hush the rustling of the silks and silence the babble of the buds, as
they call the chicks of a new season, and light up the flame of romance
in cold hearts, in desolate ones, in old burnt-out ones,--like mine, I
was going to say, but I won't, for it isn't so, and you may laugh to hear
me say it isn't so, if you like,--was perhaps better than to be
remembered a few hundred years by a few perfect stanzas, when your
gravestone is standing aslant, and your name is covered over with a
lichen as big as a militia colonel's cockade, and nobody knows or cares
enough about you to scrape it off and set the tipsy old slate-stone
upright again.

--I said nothing in reply to this, for I was thinking of a sweet singer
to whose voice I had listened in its first freshness, and which is now
only an echo in my memory. If any reader of the periodical in which
these conversations are recorded can remember so far back as the first
year of its publication, he will find among the papers contributed by a
friend not yet wholly forgotten a few verses, lively enough in their way,
headed "The Boys." The sweet singer was one of this company of college
classmates, the constancy of whose friendship deserves a better tribute
than the annual offerings, kindly meant, as they are, which for many
years have not been wanting at their social gatherings. The small
company counts many noted personages on its list, as is well known to
those who are interested in such local matters, but it is not known that
every fifth man of the whole number now living is more or less of a
poet,--using that word with a generous breadth of significance. But it
should seem that the divine gift it implies is more freely dispensed than
some others, for while there are (or were, for one has taken his Last
Degree) eight musical quills, there was but one pair of lips which could
claim any special consecration to vocal melody. Not that one that should
undervalue the half-recitative of doubtful barytones, or the brilliant