(but rather cracked and elderly), into which two women's voices
instantly blended, singing, as if by an impulse that could no more be
repressed than the morning note of the song-sparrow.--

"My Country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing!"

People looked at each other, and then at us on the platform, to see
whence came this interruption, not set down in the bills. Firmly and
irrepressibly the quavering voices sang on, verse after verse; others
of the colored people joined in; some whites on the platform began,
but I motioned them to silence. I never saw anything so electric; it
made all other words cheap; it seemed the choked voice of a race at
last unloosed. Nothing could be more wonderfully unconscious; art
could not have dreamed of a tribute to the day of jubilee that should
be so affecting; history will not believe it; and when I came to speak
of it, after it was ended, tears were everywhere. If you could have
heard how quaint and innocent it was! Old Tiff and his children might
have sung it; and close before me was a little slave-boy, almost
white, who seemed to belong to the party, and even he must join in.
Just think of it!--the first day they had ever had a country, the
first flag they had ever seen which promised anything to their people,
and here, while mere spectators stood in silence, waiting for my
stupid words, these simple souls burst out in their lay, as if they
were by their own hearths at home! When they stopped, there was
nothing to do for it but to speak, and I went on; but the life of the
whole day was in those unknown people's song.

Receiving the flags, I gave them into the hands of two fine-looking men,