The second of the ravishing voices I have heard was, as I have
said, that of another German woman.--I suppose I shall ruin myself
by saying that such a voice could not have come from any
Americanized human being.
--What was there in it?--said the schoolmistress,--and, upon my
word, her tones were so very musical, that I almost wished I had
said three voices instead of two, and not made the unpatriotic
remark above reported.--Oh, I said, it had so much WOMAN in it,
--MULIEBRITY, as well as FEMINEITY;--no self-assertion, such as free
suffrage introduces into every word and movement; large, vigorous
nature, running back to those huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but
subdued by the reverential training and tuned by the kindly culture
of fifty generations. Sharp business habits, a lean soil,
independence, enterprise, and east winds, are not the best things
for the larynx. Still, you hear noble voices among us,--I have
known families famous for them,--but ask the first person you meet
a question, and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, metallic,
matter-of-business clink in the accents of the answer, that
produces the effect of one of those bells which small trades-people
connect with their shop-doors, and which spring upon your ear with
such vivacity, as you enter, that your first impulse is to retire
at once from the precincts.
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