On the following day at ten o'clock Morlene called at the residence of Mrs. Morgan, it being her usual time for giving music lessons to that lady's young daughter. The girl had gone away on an errand for her mother and had not yet returned. Morlene entered the music room and decided to amuse herself by playing until the child should come. Dorlan was in a room directly over the one in which Morlene was to play. Neither of them knew of the presence of the other in the house.
Morlene first began to play a light air upon the piano. But as she struck the keys and brought forth harmonies, other and deeper emotions in her bosom craved for expression. Soon she was making the piano tell her heart's full story, to be borne away, as she thought, upon the wings of the passing breeze. The sounds floated up to Dorlan's open window and into his room. At first he slightly knitted his brow, fearing that he was to be bored by some mechanical performer; but the frown relaxed and gave place to a look of supreme contentment as the harmonies deepened. He closed the book that he was reading, folded his arms and gazed out of his window into the distance. He was simply enraptured and had a keen desire to know who it was that could make lifeless matter pay such eloquent tribute to the longings of the human soul.
At length Morlene began to play and sing:
"John Brown's body lies moulding in the clay;
John Brown's body lies moulding in the clay;
John Brown's body lies moulding in the clay,
As we go marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
As we go marching on!"
Morlene's voice was a rich soprano and her tones were so round, full and melodious that they made one feel that they did not belong to earth. Her voice seemed to shake loose from each word tremblingly in that part of the song setting forth the sad fate of John Brown. But as she reached the words, "Hallelujah," the notes swelled into a grand paen of triumph, her voice trilling so wondrously, even upon such a high elevation. Then came the refrain in low, reverential tones, beauty muffling itself in the presence of higher sentiments.
Dorlan Warthell sprang to his feet, clasped his hands over his ears, saying half aloud: "Spare me! Oh, spare me! I cannot, I cannot hear those strains and perform the tasks before me. And yet I must! I must! I must!"
Charles Sumner, who, upon the floor of the United States Senate, in tones that resounded throughout the world, urged our Republic to clear her skirts of the blood of the slave; Horace Greeley, who, daily in the columns of his great newspaper, refused sleep to the American conscience until slavery was extirpated; Henry Ward Beecher, whose eloquence across the seas quieted the growlings of the British Lion all but ready to aid the South; these three men, ere they fell asleep, saw fit to abandon the political party under whose banner they had hitherto fought.
And now Dorlan Warthell felt called upon to do likewise. On the eve of the severing of his tender relations, some angel voice has come to serenade his soul and conjure up the hallowed past. Ah! 'tis painful when the path of duty must be paved with one's heart strings. It is also sometimes strewn with one's blood.
