s. Ever and anon, as I listened to
the child's cry of "Oh, father, my father!" I was clutched by the icy
hand of the awful phantom he had invoked. Does anybody sing Schubert's
songs nowadays, or are they invariably left to the violins, which can
interpret their "eternal passion, eternal pain," so thrillingly? I
never, I regret to say, heard the "Serenade" sung in a way which seemed
to me adequate,--not to compare with the way in which Remenyi plays it.
Those wonderful lyrical instruments the violin, the 'cello, and the
flute have an almost exclusive right nowadays to some of the greatest
songs. Few singers attempt the "Adelaide" or "Che faro?"

I like to recall the first time I ever heard "Che faro senza Eurydice?"
A musical _matinee_ was given to an elegant elderly woman, Mrs. P----,
who had had a wide social reputation as an accomplished singer. She was
still mistress of all the technique of her art, but her voice was worn
and it was not easily conceded that she was a delightful vocalist. Many
of her songs seemed like the ghosts of the blissful happy songs she had
sung in her youth. There was something half painful in their jocund
gayety and archness. I went far away from the piano and seated myself
with a group of young people, paying little attention to the music.
Presently, however, a strain sought me out, a sweet, passionately
reiterated strain: it seemed to be supplicating, imploring; it filled me
with a restless pain. That cry of "Eurydice!" "Eurydice!" so beseeching,
so passionate, so exhausted by longing, drew me with an irresistible
power. Gluck certainly achieved the effect he attempted, and showed us
what the fabled power of Orpheus was.

Certain songs of indifferent worth often gain charm to us, although it
is only the greatest music which has the supreme power of expressing the
highest thoughts of man and the most ardent longings of his soul. But
there was a time when I found inconceivable sweetness in certain
ballads of Abt, and the like. Sara X----, a lovely youthful creature,
with a frank, beautiful smile, used to sing them, sitting down at the
piano and going on from one song to another, generally beginning with
"The Bells are Hushed," which silenced the room when twenty people were
buzzing flirtation and gossip. One line of that song, as she sang it,
draws the heart out of me still as I remember it:

Sleep well, sleep well,
And let thy lovely eyelids close.

The sentiment such songs arous