A CONTRALTO VOICE

May 9, Sunday. Visit this evening to my friends the J.’s—good supper, to which I did justice—lively chat with Mrs. J. and I. and J. As I sat out front on the walk afterward, in the evening air, the church-choir and organ on the corner opposite gave Luther’s hymn, Ein feste berg, very finely. The air was borne by a rich contralto. For nearly half an hour there in the dark (there was a good string of English stanzas), came the music, firm and unhurried, with long pauses. The full silver star-beams of Lyra rose silently over the church’s dim roof-ridge. Vari-color’d lights from the stain’d glass windows broke through the tree-shadows. And under all—under the Northern Crown up there, and in the fresh breeze below, and the chiaroscuro of the night, that liquid-full contralto.