London, I still continued to hear, on dark drizzly evenings (and
never without a thrill of poignant pain and pity) this angel's voice
wandering in the muddy streets, its perfect, round, smooth edge becoming
by degrees blunted and broken, its tones rough and coarse and harsh,
some of the notes fading into feeble indistinctness--the fine, bold,
true intonation hiding its tremulous uncertainty in trills and quavers,
alternating with pitiful husky coughing, while every now and then one or
two lovely, rich, pathetic notes, surviving ruin, recalled the early
sweetness and power of the original instrument. The idea of what that
woman's voice might have been to her used to haunt me.

It was hearing Rachel singing (barefoot) in the streets of Paris that
Jules Janin's attention was first excited by her. Her singing, as I
heard it on the stage in the drinking song of the extraordinary piece
called "Valeria," in which she played two parts, was really nothing more
than a chanting in the deep contralto of her speaking voice, and could
hardly pass for a musical performance at all, any more than her
wonderful uttering of the "Marseillaise," with which she made the
women's blood run cold, and the men's hair stand on end, and everybody's
flesh creep.

My sister and I used often to plan an expedition of street-singing for
the purpose of seeing how much we could collect in that way for some
charity. We were to put ourselves in "poor and mean attire"--I do not
know that we were to "smirch our faces" with brown paint; we thought
large battered poke-bonnets would answer the purpose, and, thus
disguised, we were to go the rounds of the club windows, my father
walking at a discreet distance for our protection on one side of the
street, and our formidable pirate friend Trelawney on the other. We
never carried out this project, though I have no doubt it would have
brought us a very pretty penny for any endowment we might have wished to
make.]

_Friday, July 22d._--Long and edifying talk with dear Dall upon my
prospects in marrying. "While you remain single," says she, "and
choose to work, your fortune is an independent and ample one; as
soon as you marry, there's no such thing. Your position in
society," says she, "is both a pleasanter and more distinguished
one than your birth or real station entitles you to; but that also
is the result of your professional exertions, and might, and
probably would, alte