Up to the Eyry in the evening, I went with others to hear the singing, when Mary, "the nightingale,"--as we sometimes called her--came. I went often and stayed long. Some were at the Hive, reading; some were, perhaps, engaged in Shakespeare; some in their rooms with their families; some at the Cottage practising the piano, and all "following their attractions," to use our common phrase, in their own little sphere--whether it was reading the papers and journals of the day in the improvised reading-room at the Hive, or commenting on the last articles in the _Harbinger,_ or doing a little work out of hours for amusement or profit, or attending one of the interminable number of meetings for consultation and arrangement held almost nightly. There the quartette sang the "Kyrie," and "Gloria in Excelsis" from the masses of Mozart and Haydn. An edition had just been published and forwarded from London, and by degrees they became familiar to us as household words. Did it not seem strange, you may ask, that these radical thinkers and "come-outers" from ordinary forms of society, should turn with pleasure to the emanations of a profoundly conservative church? I answer that, having freed their minds from sectarian prejudices, they recognized beauty and genius wherever found, and did not care what church or creed they had served, so that they found the gift of beauty from the infinite Father to man in them. With one glorious soprano voice and boundless talent, how much of joy was added to the circle! How we revelled in the choice creations of the masters of harmony, and how, slowly but surely, the missing link that was wanting in my mind to realize that music could cover the void that separated sound from feeling, came to its place--I am tempted to tell. The sweet songstress was asked to sing. Did she make excuses? Of course she would do so to follow traditional usage. She must have a slight cold, she must think she won't, must be coaxed, and then--why, do it with a grace. But here was a woman so touched with the divine fire of genius and truth, that no excuse came from her lips. She was always ready if you desired it. In her I first learned that music was not a put-on art, an accomplishment, but the outpouring of soul.