Not for the world would a young creature like Iris have let such words escape her, or such thoughts pass through her mind.  Whether at the bottom of her soul lies any uneasy consciousness of an oppressive presence, it is hard to say, until we know more about her.  Iris sits between the little man and the “Model of all the Virtues,” as the black-coated gentleman called her.—­I will watch them all.

——­Here I stop for the present.  What the Professor said has had to make way this time for what he saw and heard.

* * * * *

——­And now you may read these lines, which were written for gentle souls who love music, and read in even tones, and, perhaps, with something like a smile upon the reader’s lips, at a meeting where these musical friends had gathered.  Whether they were written with smiles or not, you can guess better after you have read them.

THE OPENING OF THE PIANO.

  In the little southern parlor of the house you
       may have seen
  With the gambrel-roof, and the gable looking
       westward to the green,
  At the side toward the sunset, with the window
       on its right,
  Stood the London-made piano I am dreaming
        of to-night.

Ah me! how I remember the evening when it
came! 
What a cry of eager voices, what a group of
cheeks in flame,
When the wondrous box was opened that had
come from over seas,
With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash
of ivory keys!

Then the children all grew fretful in the restlessness
of joy,
For the boy would push his sister, and the
sister crowd the boy,
Till the father asked for quiet in his grave
paternal way,
But the mother hushed the tumult with the
words, “Now, Mary, play.”

For the dear soul knew that music was a very
sovereign balm;
She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its
brow grow calm,
In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping
tinkling quills,
Or carolling to her spinet with its thin metallic
thrills.

So Mary, the household minstrel, who always
loved to please,
Sat down to the new “Clementi,” and struck
the glittering keys. 
Hushed were the children’s voices, and every
eye grew dim,
As, floating from lip and finger, arose the
“Vesper Hymn.”

—­Catharine, child of a neighbor, curly and
rosy-red,
(Wedded since, and a widow—­something like
ten years dead,)
Hearing a gush of music such as none
before,
Steals from her mother’s chamber and peeps
at the open door.

Just as the “Jubilate” in threaded whisper
dies,
—­“Open it! open it, lady!” the little maiden
cries
(For she thought ’twas a singing creature
caged in a box she heard,)
“Open it! open it, lady! and let me see the
bird!”