Sharp
business habits, a lean soil, independence, enterprise, and east winds,
are not the best things for the larynx. Still, you hear noble voices among
us,--I have known families famous for them,--but ask the first person you
meet a question, and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, metallic, matter-
of-business clink in the accents of the answer, that produces the effect
of one of those bells which small trades-people connect with their shop-
doors, and which spring upon your ear with such vivacity, as you enter,
that your first impulse is to retire at once from the precincts.
----Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child I saw and heard in a
French hospital. Between two and three years old. Fell out of her chair
and snapped both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient, gentle. Rough
students round her, some in white aprons, looking fearfully business-like;
but the child placid, perfectly still. I spoke to her, and the blessed
little creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly sweetness, with
that reedy thrill in it which you have heard in the thrush's even-song,
that I hear it at this moment, while I am writing, so many, many years
afterwards.--_C'est tout comme un serin_, said the French student at my
side.
These are the voices which struck the key-note of my conceptions as to
what the sounds we are to hear in heaven will be, if we shall enter
through one of the twelve gates of pearl.
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