"It is nonsense for an old fellow like me," he declared, half humourously.
"But I shall like it so much better, and then we can talk it over afterward. That's half the pleasure."
She looked so wistful out of her soft eyes, and patted his hand with her caressing little fingers, of course he couldn't say No.
It was so much harder to persuade Mrs. Underhill. "It certainly was wicked to spend so much money just to hear one woman sing. She had heard the 'Messiah,' with Madame Anna Bishop in it; and she never again expected to hear anything so beautiful this side of heaven."
They carried the day, however, in spite of her objections. Castle Garden looked like fairyland, with its brilliant lights, its hundred ushers in white gloves and rosettes, their wands tipped with ribbon as if for some grand ball. The quiet was awe-inspiring. One did not even want to whisper to his neighbour, but just sit in fascinated silence and wonder what it would be like.
Then Jenny Lind was led on the stage, and the entire audience rose with one vast, deafening cheer,—a magnificent one, as hearty as on her first night. It seemed as if they would never stop. There was a cloud of waving handkerchiefs, shaking out fragrance in the air.
A simple Swedish maiden in her gown of soft, white silk, with no blaze of diamonds, and just one rose low down in her banded hair, only her gracious sweetness and simplicity, a thousand times finer and more effective than flashing beauty. She has heard the applause many a time before, in audiences of crowned heads; and this from the multitude is just as sweet.
When all is listening, attentive silence, she begins "Casta Diva." "Hark to the voice," and every one listens with such intensity that the magnificent sound swells out and fills the farthest space. There is no striving for effect. A woman singing with a God-given voice, in simple thanks for its ownership, not a queen bidding for admiration. Had any voice ever made such glorious melody, or so stirred human souls?
The applause has in it an immensity of appreciation, as if it could never get itself wholly expressed.
Then another favourite, which everybody sang at for years afterward: "I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls." In some of the sorrows of her womanhood, the little girl was to recall the sweet refrain—