ng of all this),
"Miriam, you must go with us to an undress rehearsal. We have got
tickets, and you must go." Then beginning to answer the objections
they expected--"It is only undress," they said; "the house half
lighted, and the actors not in costume. Anybody might go,--and you
_must_."--"It's a very moral opera," began another. "Of course we
would never take you to see anything else."

Miriam was too ignorant of the world and its theatres to fairly
understand all these advantages,--indeed I fancy longing made such a
din in her ears that she paid but little attention. For a while she
withstood--then desire rose up like a whirlwind and carried all before
it. They had tickets for that very night,--her friends, said one
morning,--a ticket for her also--and an escort. She yielded and went.
Went first to take tea with her friends, on the way; and I have heard
her speak of the thrilling, pent-up excitement of that hour or two
before it was time to set out:--Excitement that made her as still as a
mouse, and the careless chatter of her friends incomprehensible!--that
made cake into plain bread and butter, and bread and butter
into--chips, for all she knew. Whether the excitement was all pleasure
I doubt if she could tell; yet if you think Miriam knew she was doing
wrong, you would be mistaken. Perhaps it was with her, in the tumult
of longing, as Fenelon says: "O how rare it is to find a soul still
enough to hear God speak!" Or perhaps the Lord, in his wisdom, chose
this time to let her set her own lesson. I can only vouch for the
dream in which she sat at tea, and walked along the street, and entered
the Opera House; glad to get out into the starlight, almost awe-struck
to find herself at last within those walls.

The rehearsal was very "undress" indeed. The house, not half lighted,
had yet fewer spectators than jets of gas,--a handful of shadowy
figures, hid away by twos and threes in the dim boxes; which were
almost too dark for the reading of libretti. However eyes were young,
and the party put their heads together and began to study out the
coming opera, and so get a taste of the pleasure beforehand.
Until--Well, as I said, Miriam was young and ignorant of the World, but
a woman's instincts (if they have not been tampered with) outgrow her
years and are independent of her experience. And as the girl bent over
the libretto, some of these instincts took fright. She found out
suddenly that those small pages