I think my education had come nearly to a standstill at this period, for, with the exception of these physical exercises, and certain hours of piano-forte practicing and singing lessons, I was left very much to the irregular and unsystematic reading which I selected for myself.  I had a good contralto voice, which my mother was very desirous of cultivating, but I think my progress was really retarded by the excessive impatience with which her excellent ear endured my unsuccessful musical attempts.  I used to practice in her sitting-room, and I think I sang out of tune and played false chords oftener, from sheer apprehension of her agonized exclamations, than I should have done under the supervision of a less sensitively organized person.  I remember my sister’s voice and musical acquirements first becoming remarkable at this time, and giving promise of her future artistic excellence.  I recollect a ballad from the Mexican opera by Bishop, called Cortex, “Oh, there’s a Mountain Palm,” which she sang with a clear, high, sweet, true little voice and touching expression, full of pathos, in which I used to take great delight.

The nervous terror which I experienced when singing or playing before my mother was carried to a climax when I was occasionally called upon to accompany the vocal performances of our friendly acquaintance, James Smith (one of the authors of the “Rejected Addresses").  He was famous for his humorous songs and his own capital rendering of them, but the anguish I endured in accompanying him made those comical performances of his absolutely tragical to me; the more so that he had a lion-like cast of countenance, with square jaws and rather staring eyes.  But perhaps he appeared so stern-visaged only to me; while he sang everybody laughed, but I perspired coldly and felt ready to cry, and so have but a lugubrious impression of some of the most amusing productions of that description, heard to the very best advantage (if I could have listened to them at all) as executed by their author.

Among our most intimate friends at this time were my cousin Horace Twiss and his wife.  I have been reminded of him in speaking of James Smith, because he had a good deal of the same kind of humor, not unmixed with a vein of sentiment, and I remember his songs, which he sang with great spirit and expression, with the more pleasure that he never required me to accompany them.  One New-Year’s Eve that he spent with us, just before going away he sang charmingly some lines he had composed in the course of the evening, the graceful turn of which, as well as the feeling with which he sang them, were worthy of Moore.  I remember only the burden: 

    “Oh, come! one genial hour improve,
       And fill one measure duly;
     A health to those we truly love,
       And those who love us truly!”

And this stanza: 

    “To-day has waved its parting wings,
       To join the days before it;
     And as for what the morning brings,
       The morning’s mist hangs o’er it.”