THE AGASSIZ SCHOOL 53 



uncertain when I saw him last whether to make a song 

 of it or adhere to his original plan of a quartette. 

 Longfellow says he has written himself out on the 

 subject witli the first effort and his music will not 

 come again at his call; so we must do with those 

 words or none at all. 



Did Dresel ever give you a song of Schumann's, 

 the words being the instructions of the Scotch widow 

 of the chief of some Highland Clan teaching her little 

 boy how to steal when he should grow up to man- 

 hood like his father.^ It is the oddest song and of a 

 decidedly questionable morahty. Dresel likes it most 

 exceedingly, principles and all. I was afraid he would 

 give me the same songs you have, in which case I 

 should have been greatly disgusted with my own per- 

 formance of them, and had very httle satisfaction in 

 singing them. But he says the songs that are a little 

 too high for you are just about right for me, so that 

 I have quite a different set. I enjoy my lessons very 

 much though often I find it impossible to practice 

 at all between times. 



I wish you would write me a little news of Mrs. 

 Gaskell, if you see her. Her life of Jane Eyre [Charlotte 

 Bronte] has interested me intensely. I have been liv- 

 ing for the last week in that lonely parsonage with 

 the populous graveyard before it, and the wild moor 

 shut in by hills all around. When you read of Char- 

 lotte Bronte's uneventful life, pressed upon by a 

 colorless monotony almost from the beginning to the 

 end you understand for the first time what a vol- 

 cano must have been pent up in her, that out of such 



