the steps of the building cautiously, lest a note of the melody which
floated through the open French windows should be lost to us. Entering the
large parlor, we found not only the chairs and sofas occupied, but the
floor well covered with seated listeners.

"I did not at first recognize the operatic air, so admirably modified and
retarded it was, and its former rapid words replaced by a sad and touching
theme, which called for noble endurance in one borne down by suffering.
The accompaniment consisted of simple chords and arpeggios, a very plain
and sufficient background. Curtis, though not yet twenty--not nineteen, if
I remember rightly--had a grave and mature appearance. He was full of
poetic sensibility, and his pure, rich voice had that sympathetic quality
that penetrates to the heart.... Curtis was not ever guilty of singing a
comic song. It would indeed have been most inappropriate to our intensely
earnest mood. Often his brother would join him in a duet with his
agreeable tenor.

"Low praises and half-spoken thanks were murmured as the grave and gracious
young friend, at the expiration of an hour, swung round on the piano-stool
and attempted to make his exit."

In his "Cheerful Yesterdays," Colonel T.W. Higginson has described the
same life as an onlooker. Although not a member of the community at Brook
Farm, he was somewhat in sympathy with it--at least, with the people of
whom it was composed. At the time he was living in Brookline and teaching
the children of a cousin. "Into this summer life," he writes, "there
occasionally came delegations of youths from Brook Farm. Among these were
George and Burrill Curtis, and Larned, with Charles Dana--all presentable
and agreeable, but the first three peculiarly costumed. It was then very
common for young men in college and elsewhere to wear what were called