Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/327

 surged like the swelling tide of the sea with the rising tempest behind it, and how then the thunderstorm burst, booming and pealing, and crashing, as when the lightning strikes close, making you start with terror! All the elementary forces of nature and all the feelings and agitations of the human soul seemed to have found their most powerful and thrilling language in the intonations of that voice and to subjugate the hearer with superlative energy. It uttered an accent of tender emotion, and instantly the tears shot into your eyes; a playful or cajolling turn of expression came, and a happy smile lightened every face in the audience. Its notes of grief or despair would make every heart sink and tremble with agony. And when one of those terrific explosions of wrath and fury broke forth you instinctively clutched the nearest object to save yourself from being swept away by the hurricane. The marvelous modulations of that voice alone sufficed to carry the soul of the listener through all the sensations of joy, sadness, pain, love, hatred, despair, jealousy, contempt, wrath, and rage, even if he did not understand the language, or if he had closed his eyes so as not to observe anything of the happenings on the stage.

But who can describe the witcheries of her gestures and the changeful play of her eyes and features? They in their turn seemed to make the spoken word almost superfluous. There was, of course, nothing of that aimless swinging of arms and sawing of the air and the other perfunctory doings of which Hamlet speaks. Rachel's action was sparing and simple. When that beautiful hand with its slender, almost translucent, fingers, moved, it spoke a language every utterance of which was a revelation to the beholder. When those hands spread out with open palms and remained for a moment in explanatory attitude—an attitude than which the richest fancy of the artist could not have imagined anything more