"In which you had to take part now and then. Yes, that is right. How smart you will feel now. Sit down on the cricket and lay your head in my lap. Father is going to sing to us, and presently we'll join in concert."
"No indeed, Rosa, I don't come down to that yet, to sit at your feet. You may go back to 'little Johnny Horner, sitting in the corner,'—as most suitable for you, and I will go on—to Cicero," and he whistled merrily away.
"That's a good idea. I wish you would sing little Johnny Horner, father."
So he began with the nursery rhymes of her childhood, gradually waxing on to a more serious strain when she joined her voice with his; and at her solicitation her mother accompanied them on the piano. The rich, musical tones of Mrs. Claremont's voice, the rapturous glow of her countenance, the graceful play of her features suggested, as Milly often observed, the presence of an angel, and perhaps the suggestion was never more apt. It is for such choice spirits one would fain reserve the dispensing power of those celestial harmonies, whose inspiring anthems speak to the lowly sons of earth to raise them heaven ward. Nothing can be more dissonant than listening to them from a voluptuary.
Surely we may pardon much to the superstition of that sect which, recognizing the divine character of music, in their argument that only those whose devotional feelings were sufficiently pure and exalted to prompt them to such sacred expression of them should be permitted to do so, in their zeal banished it altogether to prevent its abuse.
