Stars that are by night restored,
Are thy dervishes, O Lord,
Wheeling round thy golden throne!”
I believe I’ll use both songs. The suspended character of the second has a great and pathetic poetry in it. Please tell me in your next letter what kind of voice Bìlâl ought to have—being a woolly-headed Abyssinian. I suppose I’ll have to make him a tenor. I can’t imagine a basso making those flourishes about the name of the Eternal.
Next week I’ll send you selections of Provençal and other music which I believe are new. My library is very fine. I have a collection worth a great deal of money which you would like to see.
If you ever come down here, you could stay with me nicely, and have a pleasant artistic time.
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO H.E. KREHBIEL
New Orleans, October, 1883.
My dear Krehbiel,—I have been too sick with a strangling cold to write as I had wished, or to copy for you something for which I had already obtained the music-paper. Nevertheless I am going to ask another favour. I hope you can find time to copy separately for me the Arabic words of the Adzan: I prefer Villoteau. As for Koran-reading, it would delight me; but please give me the number of the sura, or chapter, from which the words are taken.