It's not worth a straw, and
it's a shame to sing it, but if it be sung at all, it might as well be
sung as well as it might!"
So saying she seated herself at the piano.
This convulsion was in Hester's being a phenomenon altogether new, for
never before had she been beside herself in the presence of another.
She gazed for a moment at the song on the rest before her, then summoned
as with a command the chords which Corney had seemed to pick up from
among his feet, and began. The affect of her singing upon the song was
as if the few poor shivering plants in the garden of March had every one
blossomed at once. The words and music both were in truth as worthless
as she had said; but they were words, and it was music, and words have
always some meaning, and tones have always some sweetness; all the
meaning and all the sweetness in the song Hester laid hold of, drew out,
made the best of; while all the feeble element of the dramatic in it she
forced, giving it an expression far beyond what could have been in the
mind of the writer capable of such inadequate utterance--with the result
that it was a different song altogether from that which Cornelius had
sung.
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