though they were possessed of the three "Rs" which
are all and more than are needed to insure admission to New York
society--Riches, Respectability and Religion--yet were not in Society;
or, at least, in the society that calls itself Society. This was not
because Society was not willing to have them. It was because they
thought the world too worldly. Perhaps this was one reason--although the
social horizon of the two families had expanded somewhat as the girls
grew up--why Louise and Esther, who had been playmates from their
nursery days, and had grown up to be two uncommonly sentimental,
fanciful, enthusiastically morbid girls, were to be found spending a
bright Winter afternoon holding a ceremonial service of worship before
the photograph of a fashionable French tenor.

It happened to be a French tenor whom they were worshiping. It might as
well have been anybody or any thing else. They were both at that period
of girlish growth when the young female bosom is torn by a hysterical
craving to worship something--any thing. They had been studying music
and they had selected the tenor who was the sensation of the hour in New
York for their idol. They had heard him only on the concert stage; they
were never likely to see him nearer. But it was a mere matter of chance
that the idol was not a Boston Transcendentalist, a Popular Preacher, a
Faith-Cure Healer, or a ringleted old maid with advanced ideas of
Woman's Mission. The ceremonies might have been different in form: the
worship would have been the same.

M. Hyppolite Remy was certainly the musical hero of the hour. When his
advance notices first appeared, the New York critics, who are a
singularly unconfiding, incredulous lot, were inclined to discount his
European reputation.

When they learned that M. Remy was not only a great artist, but a man
whose character was "wholly free from that deplorable laxity which is so
often a blot on the proud escutcheon of his noble profession;" that he
had married an American lady; that he had "embraced the Protestant
religion"--no sect was specified, possibly to avoid jealousy--and that
his health was delicate, they were moved to suspect that he might have
to ask that allowances be made for his singing. But when he arrived, his
triumph was complete. He was as handsome as his picture, if he _was_ a
trifle short, a shade too stout.

He was a singer of genius, too; with a splendid voice and a sound
method--on the whole. It was before