Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

HENSELT 263
dale Bennett, and ask them to transport themselves
in fancy to a small and quiet pension, Eue Pradier,
Geneva. It is only nine o'clock a.m., an hour when
musicians and musical students often begin their work,
but scarcely the time when lovers of music would
meet in order to enjoy a practice together, or listen
to one ; and yet three persons—three musical natures
—are in yonder room, each giving the other a farewell
specimen of their individual and singularly differing
reflexes of art-feeling. A gentleman, young and pale
and dreamy-looking, has sung Das Veilchen by Mozart,
and In diesen heiligen Hallen. An older and a younger
lady play Beethoven's Choral Fantasia, at which they
have both worked very thoroughly ; the younger lady
(myself) plays two pieces from Bach's Suite Anglaise,
and then the elder lady utters the words, 'We all
three are truly musical ; and yet, though we have
lived for sis weeks or more under the same roof, we
have been so stiff and conventional, so slow in recog-
nising the bond that existed between us, that not until
a week or ten days ago have we expanded to each
other, and interchanged what we each possess. But
—and here the lady's voice took a more earnest tone,
and her dark eyes glanced sadly at the other two—
' what might we not have done for each other had it
been otherwise ! and what have we not missed which
life may perhaps never again present to us ! For it is
a rare circumstance when three so essentially musical
natures, at once so sympathetic to each other, and yet
'