In short, there was nothing very unusual in the story, and
nothing at all remarkable in the verse. All the wonder of the
performance had been in the voice of the woman. But long after
the singer had gone that voice seemed still to stay,--making
within me a sense of sweetness and of sadness so strange that I
could not but try to explain to myself the secret of those
magical tones.

And I thought that which is hereafter set down:--


All song, all melody, all music, means only some evolution of the
primitive natural utterance of feeling,--of that untaught speech
of sorrow, joy, or passion, whose words are tones. Even as other
tongues vary, so varies this language of tone combinations.
Wherefore melodies which move us deeply have no significance to
Japanese ears; and melodies that touch us not at all make
powerful appeal to the emotion of a race whose soul-life differs
from our own as blue differs from yellow....Still, what is the
reason of the deeper feelings evoked in me--an alien--by this
Oriental chant that I could never even learn,--by this common
song of a blind woman of the people? Surely that in the voice of
the singer there were qualities able to make appeal to something
larger than the sum of the experience of one race,--to something
wide as human life, and ancient as the knowledge of good and
evil.


One summer evening, twenty-five years ago, in a London park, I