"You should allow your friends to be the judge of that, Mr. Douglass," she said, pleasantly. "I am quite certain myself that we should find much more than a passing interest if we could induce you to favor us. The songs inspired by this environment must naturally be full of color and strength. I should very much enjoy hearing one." "Upon your heads be it, then!" He seated himself at the piano. "This," he said, turning to Mrs. Brevoort, meaningly, "I call 'The Song of the Wolf.'" Through the silence of the room crept a queer, faint murmur like the breath of an aeolian harp or the sighing of the wind through far-off pines. There was no attempt at harmonious arrangement and concordance; it was rather a vague, erratic and intangible dissonance, a weird jumble of soft discords that alternately pleased and pained. Gradually it increased in volume, as the wind rises to the approach of a storm, culminating finally in a thunderous crash of double bass. Then out of the contrastive silence of the succeeding lull came unmistakably the mournful howl of a wolf, wonderfully rendered by a few soft tremulous touches of those strong yet sensitive fingers. Another rolling crash, a diminishing rumble, and then the rich, deep voice of the singer: "Child of the Wind and Sun, I glide Like a tongue of flame o'er the mountain's side. Wherever falleth my blighting tread Lie the whitening bones of the silent Dead. For trail of wrath Is my red-wet path From the Sea's low rim to the glaciers high, _Ai y-u-u--yu--yu-u-u-u!_ I live the better that others die. _Ai yu-u-u-u-u-u!_ "Oh! sweet is the scent in the evening gale, Of the dun deer wending adown the trail Where I lie, grim ambushed, with bated breath, A gray lance couched in the hand of Death! At that maddening tang White-bared each fang, Dripping anon with ambrosia red; _Ai y-u-u--yu--yu-u-u-u!_ Haste, sweetheart, to the feast outspread! _Ai yu-u-u-u-u-u!_ "But sweeter even than Life's rich wine, As, hot from the kill--ah-h! draught divine!-- It trickles adown my ravished throat, Is my gaunt mate's deep-toned, chesty note. As o'er hill and plain She calls amain Till the welkin quivers with ecstasy: _Ai y-u-u--yu--yu-u-u-u!_ 'Oh come, Beloved, to Love and me!' _Ai yu-u-u-u-u-u!_ "Manlings spawned in the cities' slime. Weaklings, withered before your prime. What ken ye of the joys there be Of Life and of Love and of Liberty! Better hill and dell As free Ishmael Than the shackles of pomp and pageantry: _Ai yu-u-u--yu--yu-u-u-u!_ Come out, oh! faint hearts, and howl with me! _Ai yu-u-u-u-u-u!_" In the storm of applause that rewarded his unique performance he rose and went over to the fireplace.