Could she do nothing for such wives at least? The man who by honest means
made people laugh, sent a fire-headed arrow into the ranks of the
beleaguering enemy of his race; he who beguiled from another a genuine
tear, made heavenly wind visit his heart with a cool odor of paradise!
What was there for her to do?
But possibly Hester might neither have begun nor gone on thinking thus,
had it not been for a sense of power within her springing from, or at
least associated with, a certain special gift which she had all her
life, under the faithful care of her mother, been cultivating. Endowed
with a passion for music--what is a true passion but a heavenly
hunger?--which she indulged; relieved, strengthened, nor ever sated, by
a continuous study of both theoretical and practical music, she
approached both piano and organ with eager yet withholding foot, each as
a great and effectual door ready to open into regions of delight. But
she was gifted also with a fine contralto voice, of exceptional scope
and flexibility, whose capacity of being educated into an organ of
expression was not thrown away upon one who had a world inside her to
express--doubtless as yet not a little chaotic, but in process of
assuming form that might demand utterance; and this angelic instrument
had for some years been under careful training.
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