Few Americans, we presume, expected that the department of the Paris Exposition in which the United States should most surpass other nations would be that appropriated to musical instruments. Even our cornets and bugles are highly commended in Paris. The cabinet organs, according to several correspondents, are much admired. We can hardly credit the assertion of an intelligent correspondent of the Tribune, that the superiority of the American pianos is not "questioned" by Erard, Pleyel, and Hertz, but we can well believe that it is acknowledged by the great players congregated at Paris. The aged Rossini is reported to have said, after listening to an American piano, "It is like a nightingale cooing in a thunder-storm."
AN EMBER-PICTURE.
How strange are the freaks of memory!
The lessons of life we forget,
While a trifle, a trick of color,
In the wonderful web is set,—
Set by some mordant of fancy,
And, despite the wear and tear
Of time or distance or trouble,
Insists on its right to be there.
A chance had brought us together;
Our talk was of matters of course;
We were nothing, one to the other,
But a short half-hour's resource.
We spoke of French acting and actors,
And their easy, natural way,—
Of the weather, for it was raining
As we drove home from the play.
We debated the social nothings
Men take such pains to discuss;
The thunderous rumors of battle
Were silent the while for us.
Arrived at her door, we left her
With a drippingly hurried adieu,
And our wheels went crunching the gravel
Of the oak-darkened avenue.
As we drove away through the shadow,
The candle she held in the door,
From rain-varnished tree-trunk to tree-trunk
Flashed fainter, and flashed no more,—