ss sensitively organized person. I remember
my sister's voice and musical acquirements first becoming remarkable at
this time, and giving promise of her future artistic excellence. I
recollect a ballad from the Mexican opera by Bishop, called Cortex, "Oh,
there's a Mountain Palm," which she sang with a clear, high, sweet, true
little voice and touching expression, full of pathos, in which I used to
take great delight.

The nervous terror which I experienced when singing or playing before my
mother was carried to a climax when I was occasionally called upon to
accompany the vocal performances of our friendly acquaintance, James
Smith (one of the authors of the "Rejected Addresses"). He was famous
for his humorous songs and his own capital rendering of them, but the
anguish I endured in accompanying him made those comical performances of
his absolutely tragical to me; the more so that he had a lion-like cast
of countenance, with square jaws and rather staring eyes. But perhaps he
appeared so stern-visaged only to me; while he sang everybody laughed,
but I perspired coldly and felt ready to cry, and so have but a
lugubrious impression of some of the most amusing productions of that
description, heard to the very best advantage (if I could have listened
to them at all) as executed by their author.

Among our most intimate friends at this time were my cousin Horace Twiss
and his wife. I have been reminded of him in speaking of James Smith,
because he had a good deal of the same kind of humor, not unmixed with a
vein of sentiment, and I remember his songs, which he sang with great
spirit and expression, with the more pleasure that he never required me
to accompany them. One New-Year's Eve that he spent with us, just before
going away he sang charmingly some lines he had composed in the course
of the evening, the graceful turn of which, as well as the feeling with
which he sang them, were worthy of Moore. I remember only the burden:

"Oh, come! one genial hour improve,
And fill one measure duly;
A health to those we truly love,
And those who love us truly!"

And this stanza:

"To-day has waved its parting wings,
To join the days before it;
And as for what the morning brings,
The morning's mist hangs o'er it."

It was delightful to hear him and my mother talk together, and their
disputes, though frequent, seemed generally extremely amicable, and as
diverting to themselves a