Miss Martineau piled her treasures on a table and culled the specimens worthy of pressing, and it seemed to pain her to reject the least promising of her perishable plunder.  She must have had a passion for flowers, judging from the tenderness with which she handled the lovely fronds and delicate petals under inspection, while her mouth was continually open in admiring exclamation.

And now came what I still fondly remember as the Musicale.  A little comrade came in the twilight to sing songs with me.  With arms interlaced, we paced the upper hall, vociferously warbling as breath was given us, when a door opened, and the gifted, dark-faced woman, with kindly eyes, beamed out on us.  “Come,” she called, “come in here, children, and sing your songs for me:  I am very fond of music.”  Very bashfully we signified our willingness to oblige,—­indeed, we dared not do otherwise,—­and sidled into the room.  Closing the door, our hostess curled herself comfortably on a gayly-cushioned lounge, and proceeded to adjust a serpent-like, squirming appendage to her ear.  With an encouraging nod, she bade us commence, closing her eyes meanwhile with an air of expectant rapture.  But the vibrating trumpet stirred our foolish souls to explosive laughter, partially smothered in a simultaneous strangled cough.  Wondering at the double paroxysm and subsequent hush of shame, she unclosed her eyes, softly murmuring, “Don’t be bashful nor afraid, my dears.  I am very far from home, and you can make me very happy, if you will.  Pray begin at once, and then I will also sing for you.”  Taking courage, we piped as bidden, rendering in a childish way the strains of “Blue-Eyed Mary,” “Comin’ through the Rye,” “I’d be a Butterfly,” and “Auld Lang Syne,” Our audience, with bright, attentive looks, regarded the performance in pleased approval, softly tapping time on her knee with a slender finger.

“Now it is my turn,” said Miss Martineau.  Straightening herself and casting aside the trumpet, primly folding her hands and pursing her mouth curiously, she began, in a high, quavering voice, a song whose burden was the fixed objection on the part of a certain damsel to forsaking the pleasures of the world for the seclusion and safety of a convent: 

    Now, is it not a pity such a pretty girl as I
    Should be sent to a nunnery to pine away and die? 
    But I won’t be a nun,—–­ no, I won’t be a nun;
    I’m so fond of pleasure that I cannot be a nun.

It is impossible to give an idea of the jerky style of the lady’s singing which so tickled our sensitive ears.  At every repetition of the refrain, Susy and I squeezed our locked fingers spasmodically in order to suppress the unseemly laughter bubbling to our lips.  At every emphatic word she nodded at us merrily, thus adding to our inward disquiet.

I like now, when picturing Harriet Martineau entertaining with noble themes the men and women of letters she drew around her in England and America, to remember, in connection with her strong, plain face and brilliant intellect, the simple kindliness with which she once unbent to a brace of little Hoosier maids in the “Far West.”