Everybody noticed, as she came into church that morning, how beautiful
Mary Scudder looked. It was no longer the beauty of the carved statue,
the pale alabaster shrine, the sainted virgin, but a warm, bright,
living light, that spoke of some summer breath breathing within her
soul.
When she took her place in the singers' seat, she knew, without turning
her head, that he was in his old place, not far from her side; and
those whose eyes followed her to the gallery marvelled at her face
there,--
"her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought
That you might almost say her body thought";
for a thousand delicate nerves were becoming vital once more,--the holy
mystery of womanhood had wrought within her.
When they rose to sing, the tune must needs be one which they had often
sung together, out of the same book, at the singing-school,--one of
those wild, pleading tunes, dear to the heart of New England,--born, if
we may credit the report, in the rocky hollows of its mountains, and
whose notes have a kind of grand and mournful triumph in their warbling
wail, and in which different parts of the harmony, set contrary to all
the canons of musical Pharisaism, had still a singular and romantic
effect, which a true musical genius would not have failed to recognize.
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