It was but recently that I heard a German choral society sing German songs to a delighted American audience. Then came something weird, strange; it was German, yet the words were not German. Looking at the programme, it turned out to be the famous plantation song, "'Way down upon the Suwannee River." The audience looked bewildered; there was no applause, though, judging by the attitude of the singers, they had expected to make this the grand hit of the evening. The last performance of the great festival of the United German singers in Philadelphia, in 1897, was the production of the "Star-Spangled Banner." Everything in the appearance of the singers showed that this finale was to be the crowning act of the entire festival. All the singers, male and female, participated, and "Old Glory" was waved in the air during the performance. But, as I had feared, it was a complete failure. Instead of the vast audience spontaneously rising to its feet and being carried away by enthusiasm, it remained cold and indifferent, and there was no applause commensurate with what it would have been had the performers sung the words with the true ring in them and the true English accent. The same thing would happen if the "Marseillaise" were sung in France, or the "Wacht am Rhein" in Germany, by foreign singing societies, no matter how excellently schooled, and how artistically rendered. A similar experience was had by Madame Brinkerhoff, who relates the same in _The Vocalist_ of December, 1896, as follows: "To show how language is imbedded in the _timbre_ of the voice, I will relate an incident of last season. On the first night of the representation of the 'Scarlet Letter,' by Damrosch, sung by German singers, I was not surprised or in the least displeased at hearing this beautiful opera sung with the German _timbre_ of voice; but after listening to a whole act, I heard no German words; I listened in vain for the shaping of their consonants and vowels, although I heard the German sounds or _timbres_. So I asked the lady seated next to me what language the people on the stage were singing. 'German,' she replied. I said: 'But I hear no German words. Will you kindly listen and tell me when you hear German words?' She listened and replied, 'No, I do not hear German words, but I thought before it was German.' She asked me if it was English. We could not decide it until the lights were turned on, and looked at the programme, which read, 'sung in English.'