I do not know that the exclusion of chit-chat of our friends drove us to books for entertainment, when miles of seams and gussets and overcasting lay between us and springtime with its outdoor amusements and occupations. I do say that we did not pine for evening “functions,” for luncheons and matinées, when we had plenty of books to read aloud and congenial companions with whom to discuss what we read. Once a week we had a singing-class, which met around our dining-table. My father led this, giving the key with his tuning-fork, and now and then accompanying with his flute a hymn in which his tenor was not needed. Have I ever spoken of the singular fact that he had “no ear for music,” yet sang tunefully and with absolute accuracy, with the notes before him? He could not carry the simplest air without the music-book. It was a clear case of a lack of co-ordination between ear and brain. He was passionately fond of music, and sang well in spite of it, playing the flute correctly and with taste—always by note. Take away the printed or written page, and he was all at sea. Those songful evenings were the one dissipation of the week. A singing-master, the leader of a Richmond choir, had had a school at the Court House the winter before, and _The Boston Academy_ was in every house in the village. I could run glibly over the names of the regular attendants on the Tuesday evenings devoted to our _musicale_. George Moody, my father’s good-looking ward, now seventeen, and already in love up to his ears with Effie D., my especial crony, who was a month my junior; Thaddeus Ivey, a big blond of the true Saxon type, my father’s partner, and engaged to be married to a pretty Lynchburg girl; James Ivey, a clerk in the employ of Hawes & Ivey—nice and quiet and gentlemanly, and in love with nobody that we knew of—these were the bassos. Once in a while, “Cousin Joe,” who was busily engaged in a seven years’ courtship of a fair villager, Effie’s sister, joined us and bore our souls and voices aloft with the sonorous “brum! brum!” of a voice at once rich and well-trained. There were five sopranos—we called it “the treble” then—and two women sang “the second treble.” One weak-voiced neighbor helped my father out with the tenor. Until a year or two before the singing-master invaded the country, women sang tenor, and the alto was known as “counter.” The twentieth century has not quite repudiated the tunes we delighted in on those winter nights, when “The fire, with hickory logs supplied, Went roaring up the chimney wide,” and we lined both sides of the long table, lighted by tall sperm-oil lamps, and bent seriously happy faces over _The Boston Academy_, singing with the spirit and, to the best of our ability, with the understanding—“Lanesboro’” and “Cambridge” and “Hebron” and “Boyleston” and “Zion,” and learning, with puckered brows and steadfast eyes glued to the notes, such new tunes as “Yarmouth,” “Anvern,” and “Zerah.”