Dealings with the Dead, Volume 2 (of 2)Sargent, Lucius M. (Lucius Manlius)
History
Dealings with the Dead, Volume 2 (of 2)
Sargent, Lucius M. (Lucius Manlius)
Death; Funeral rites and ceremonies; Funeral rites and ceremonies -- United States
She came here with an irresistible prestige. A singing woman has been a
proverb, since the world began; and, of course, long before Ulysses
dropped in, upon the island of Ogygia, and listened to Calypso; or fell
into serious difficulty, among the Sirens. A singing woman, a Siren, has
been frequently accounted, and with great propriety, a singing bird of
evil omen. How grateful then must it be, to know, that, while lending
their ears and their eyes to this incomparable songstress, our wives, our
daughters, and our sisters have before them a pure, and virtuous, and
gentle, and generous creature, as free, as poor, human nature can well be
free, from life's alloy, and very much as she was, when created--_a little
lower than the angels_.
Among other mythological matters, Pausanias relates, that the three
Sirens, instigated by Juno, challenged the Muses to a trial of skill in
singing. They were beaten, of course, for the Muses, being nine in number,
there were three upon one. The victors, as the story goes, proceeded very
deliberately, to pluck the golden feathers, from the wings of the
vanquished, and converted them into crowns, for their own brows.
Now, it cannot be denied, that Jenny has vanquished us all, and made the
golden feathers fly abundantly. But this is not Jenny's fault; for,
whatever the wisdom or the folly, the affair was our own entirely. If, for
the sake of distinction, any one has seen fit to pluck every golden
feather from his back, and appear, like the featherless biped of Diogenes,
and give the golden feathers to Jenny, to make her a crown; we have
substantial facts, upon which to predict, that Jenny will make a better
use of those golden feathers, than to fool them away, for a song. If Jenny
plucks golden feathers, from the backs of the rich, she finds bare spots
enough, for a large part of them all, upon the backs of the poor: and, as
for the crown, for Jenny's brows, if she goes onward, as she has begun,
investing her treasure _in Heaven_, and selecting the Lord for her
paymaster, _there_ will be her coronation; and her crown a crown of Glory.
And, when she comes to lie down and die, let the two last lines of
Johnson's imperishable epitaph, on Philips, be inscribed upon her tomb--
"Rest undisturb'd, beneath this marble shrine,
Till angels wake thee, with a note like thine."
Orpheus was changed into a swan; Philomela into a nightingale; and Jenny,
in due time, will be changed into an angel. Indeed, it is the opinion of
some competent judges, that the metamorphosis has already commenced.
Music is such a delightful, soothing thing, that one grieves, to think its
professors and amateurs are frequently so excessively irritable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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