through the old woods, and over
the calm surface of that sleeping lake, and with a joyousness, too,
that told how welcome they were among those wild and primeval things.

After listening to their music for half an hour, we invited our new
friends ashore. We found them to be two young gentlemen from
Philadelphia, who had just graduated at one of the Eastern colleges,
and who had concluded to spend a month among these mountains and
lakes, before entering upon the study of the profession to which they
were to devote themselves. They had been close friends from their
childhood, and room-mates during their collegiate course. They had
cultivated their taste for music, until few mere amateurs could equal
their skill upon their respective instruments, or in harmony of voice.
They were highly intelligent and courteous gentlemen, and if their
future shall equal the promise of the present, they will make their
mark in the world. We accepted, at parting, their invitation to
breakfast with them on the morrow, and at one o'clock they left us to
return to their shanty over the lake. We sent one of our boatmen to
row them home; and as they started across the water, they treated us
to a concert to which it was pleasant to listen. There is something
surpassingly sweet in the music of the flute and violin in the hands
of skillful performers; and yet, to my thinking, it falls far short of
the melody of the human voice. I have listened to some of the most
celebrated singers, and of the most distinguished performers, but it
appears to me now, that I never, on any other occasion, heard the
melody of the human voice, or instrumental music half so enchanting,
as that which came floating over the lake on that calm summer night.
There was a volume and compass about it which can never be reached in
a concert room. It was not loud, but it seemed to fill all the air
with its sweetness. It came over the senses like a pleasant dream, as
it went swelling up to the hills that skirted the lake, floating away
over the water, and dying away in lengthened cadence in the old
forests. Every other sound was hushed; the voices of the night-birds
were stilled; even the frogs along the shore suspended their
bellowing, and all nature seemed listening to the new harmony that
thus fell like enchantment upon the repose of midnight. The music grew
fainter and fainter as it receded, until only an occasional strain,
wavy and dream-like, came creeping like the voice of a