Both
partook of it with thanks.
"Seven o'clock!" said Friar Bacon. "And now we better get across to
the concert, men, for the music will be beginning."
The concert was in Friar Bacon's laboratory; a large building near
at hand, in an open field. The bettermost people of the village and
neighbourhood were in a gallery on one side, and, in a gallery
opposite the orchestra. The whole space below was filled with the
labouring people and their families, to the number of five or six
hundred. We had been obliged to turn away two hundred to-night,
Friar Bacon said, for want of room--and that, not counting the boys,
of whom we had taken in only a few picked ones, by reason of the
boys, as a class, being given to too fervent a custom of applauding
with their boot-heels.
The performers were the ladies of Friar Bacon's family, and two
gentlemen; one of them, who presided, a Doctor of Music. A piano
was the only instrument. Among the vocal pieces, we had a negro
melody (rapturously encored), the Indian Drum, and the Village
Blacksmith; neither did we want for fashionable Italian, having Ah!
non giunge, and Mi manca la voce. Our success was splendid; our
good-humoured, unaffected, and modest bearing, a pattern.
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