ng of the intermezzo?

. . . The murmuring dying notes,
That fall as soft as snow on the sea;

and

The passionate strain that, deeply going,
Refines the bosom it trembles through.

What can one say of those vague aspirations and finest thoughts which
possess the very dullest among us when such music as that which the
little girl had chosen catches us and keeps us, if only for a passing
moment, but that moment of the rarest worth and loveliness in our
unlovely lives?

What can one say of the highest music except that, like death, it is the
great leveller: it gathers us all to its tender keeping--and we rest.

The little girl ceased playing. There was not a sound to be heard;
the magic was still holding her listeners. When at last they had freed
themselves with a sigh, they pressed forward to greet her.

"There is only one person who can play like that," cried the major, with
sudden inspiration--"she is Miss Thyra Flowerdew."

The little girl smiled.

"That is my name," she said, simply; and she slipped out of the room.

The next morning, at an early hour, the bird of passage took her flight
onward, but she was not destined to go off unobserved. Oswald Everard
saw the little figure swinging along the road, and she overtook her.

"You little wild bird!" he said. "And so this was your great idea--to
have your fun out of us all, and then play to us and make us feel I
don't know how, and then to go."

"You said the company wanted stirring up," she answered, "and I rather
fancy I have stirred them up."

"And what do you suppose you have done for me?" he asked.

"I hope I have proved to you that the bellows-blower and the organist
are sometimes identical," she answered.

But he shook his head.

"Little wild bird," he said, "you have given me a great idea, and I will
tell you what it is: _to tame you_. So good-bye for the present."

"Good-bye," she said. "But wild birds are not so easily tamed."

Then she waved her hand over her head, and went on her way singing.

KOOSJE: A STUDY OF DUTCH LIFE, by John Strange Winter

Her name was Koosje van Kampen, and she lived in Utrecht, that most
quaint of quaint cities, the Venice of the North.

All her life had been passed under the shadow of the grand old Dom Kerk;
she had played bo-peep behind the columns and arcades of the ruined,
moss-grown cloisters; had slipped up and fallen down the steps leading
to the _grachts_; had once or t