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132 their seats at the foot of the pulpit, as if to say, "Is not there something for us to do in the way of church government?"

As I came down from the gallery, a sharp, gaunt Welsh woman seized me by the arm, saying:

"What was the matter with you all, up there? You begun wery well, only too much like a scrame. Then you went gallivanting off like a parcel of wild colts, and did not sing the tune that you begun—not at all."

How the shrill-voiced old lady, who could not sing, should know what the new tune was, or ought to be, I was not given to understand.

The apartment allotted to our musical instruction was a very large one in the Court-House. Behind a broad table, where, in term time, the lawyers took notes of evidence, or rectified their briefs, sat we girls of the novitiate, technically called the "young treble." In the gallery, raised a few steps above us, were the older, more experienced singers, some of whom were the beautiful belles of the city. If aught in our deportment displeased them, or they fancied us growing too self-complacent, they did not fail to look over the parapet and reprehend us. Our teacher was painfully sensitive to discords. I have seen him set his teeth, and the color forsake his lips, at a succession of false sounds. They were to him what donkeys were to Betsy Trotwood. On such occasions his irritability