threes and larger groups,
slowly climb its path. They are on their way to hear the great organ
played.

The audience was already seated. It was at the moment of that profound
hush which precedes the recital. Even my footfall, light as it was,
reechoed to the groined arches. The church was ghostly dark,--so dark that
the hundreds of heads melted into the mass of pews, and they into the
gloom of column and wall. The only distinguishable gleam was the soft glow
of the dying day struggling through the lower panes of the dust-begrimed
windows. Against these hung long chains holding unlighted lamps.

I felt my way to an empty pew on a side aisle, and sat down. The silence
continued. Now and again there was a slight cough, instantly checked. Once
a child dropped a book, the echoes lasting apparently for minutes. The
darkness became almost black night. Only the clean, new panes of glass
used in repairing some break in the begrimed windows showed clear. These
seemed to hang out like small square lanterns.

Suddenly I was aware that the stillness was broken by a sound faint as a
sigh, delicate as the first breath of a storm. Then came a great sweep
growing louder, the sweep of deep thunder tones with the roar of the
tempest, the rush of the mighty rain, the fury of the avalanche, the
voices of the birds singing in the sunlight, the gurgle of the brooks,
and the soft cadence of the angelus calling the peasants to prayers.
Then, a pause and another burst of melody, ending in profound silence,
as if the door of heaven had been opened and as quickly shut. Then a
clear voice springing into life, singing like a lark, rising,
swelling--up--up--filling the church--the roof--the sky! Then the heavenly
door thrown wide, and the melody pouring out in a torrent, drowning the
voice. Then above it all, while I sat quivering, there soared like a bird
in the air, singing as it flew, one great, superb, vibrating, resolute
note, pure, clear, full, sensuous, untrammeled, dominating the heavens:
not human, not divine; like no woman's, like no man's, like no angel's
ever dreamed of,--the vox humana.

It did not awaken in me any feeling of reverence or religious ecstasy. I
only remember that the music took possession of my soul. That beneath and
through it all I felt the vibrations of all the tragic things that come to
men and women in their lives. Scenes from out an irrelevant past swept
across my mind. I heard again the long winding note of the