ow she beguiled me into giving her lessons on the
organ, as well as the piano, and yesterday when I went over to the
church at instruction hour, I was astonished at a prelude, which she
had evidently improvised. Screened from her view, I listened till she
finished playing. Of course I praised her (for really she has
remarkable talent), and asked her when she began to compose, to
improvise. Now what do you suppose she answered? A brigade of
Philadelphia lawyers could never guess. She looked at me very
steadily, and said as nearly as I can quote her words: 'I really
don't know exactly when I began, but I suppose a long time ago, when
I wore brown feathers, and went to sleep with my head under my wing,
as all nightingales do.' Said I: 'What upon earth do you mean?' She
replied: 'Why of course I mean when I was a nightingale, before I
grew to be a human being. Didn't you hear Mr. Hargrove last week
reading from that curious book, in which so many queer things were
told about transmigration, and how the soul of a musical child came
from the nightingale, the sweetest of singers? And don't you
recollect Mr. Lindsay said that Plato believed it; and that Plotinus
taught that people who lead pure lives and yet love music to excess,
go into the bodies of melodious birds when they die? Just now when I
played, I was wondering how a nightingale felt, swinging in a plum
tree all white with fragrant bloom, and watching the cattle cropping
buttercups and dandelions in the field. Mrs. Lindsay, if my soul is
not perfectly fresh and brand new, I hope it never went into a human
body before mine, because I would much lather it came straight to me
from a sweet innocent bird."

"Surely, Elise, you are as usual, jesting?" exclaimed her brother.

"On the contrary, I assure you I neither magnify nor embellish. I am
merely stating unvarnished facts, that you may thoroughly understand
into what fertile soil your scattered grains of learning fall. I
promise you, with moderate cultivation it will yield an
hundred-fold."

"Mother, what did you say to her, by way of a dose of orthodoxy to
antidote the metempsychosis poison?" asked Mr. Lindsay, who could not
forbear laughing, at the astonished expression of his uncle's
countenance.

"At first I was positively dumb, and stared at the child, very much
as I daresay Mahamaia did, when her boy Arddha-Chiddi stood upon his
feet and spoke five minutes after his entrance into this world of
woe, or when at