(For there is a scent to
everything, even the snow, if you can only detect it--no two places,
hardly any two hours, anywhere, exactly alike. How different the odor
of noon from midnight, or winter from summer, or a windy spell from a
still one.)
A CONTRALTO VOICE
_May 9, Sunday_.--Visit this evening to my friends the J.'s--good
supper, to which I did justice--lively chat with Mrs. J. and I. and
J. As I sat out front on the walk afterward, in the evening air, the
church-choir and organ on the corner opposite gave Luther's hymn, _Ein
feste berg_, very finely. The air was borne by a rich contralto. For
nearly half an hour there in the dark (there was a good string of
English stanzas,) came the music, firm and unhurried, with long
pauses. The full silver star-beams of Lyra rose silently over the
church's dim roof-ridge. Vari-color'd lights from the stain'd glass
windows broke through the tree-shadows. And under all--under the
Northern Crown up there, and in the fresh breeze below, and the
_chiaroscuro_ of the night, that liquid-full contralto.
SEEING NIAGARA TO ADVANTAGE
_June 4, '80_.--For really seizing a great picture or book, or piece
of music, or architecture, or grand scenery--or perhaps for the first
time even the common sunshine, or landscape, or may-be even the
mystery of identity, most curious mystery of all--there comes some
lucky five minutes of a man's life, set amid a fortuitous concurrence
of circumstances, and bringing in a brief flash the culmination of
years of reading and travel and thought.
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