If she cannot have a companion to listen to
her woes, and has no musical utterance, vocal or instrumental,--then,
if she is of the real woman sort, and has a few heartfuls of wild blood
in her, and you have done her a wrong,--double-bolt the door which she
may enter on noiseless slipper at midnight,--look twice before you taste
of any cup whose draught the shadow of her hand may have darkened!
But let her talk, and, above all, cry, or, if she is one of the
coarser-grained tribe, give her the run of all the red-hot expletives in
the language, and let her blister her lips with them until she is tired,
she will sleep like a lamb after it, and you may take a cup of coffee
from her without stirring it up to look for its sediment. So, if she
can sing, or play on any musical instrument, all her wickedness will run
off through her throat or the tips of her fingers. How many tragedies
find their peaceful catastrophe in fierce roulades and strenuous
bravuras! How many murders are executed in double-quick time upon the
keys which stab the air with their dagger-strokes of sound! What would
our civilization be without the piano? Are not Erard and Broadwood and
Chickering the true humanizers of our time? Therefore do I love to hear
the all-pervading _tum tum_ jarring the walls of little parlors in
houses with double door-plates on their portals, looking out on streets
and courts which to know is to be unknown, and where to exist is not to
live, according to any true definition of living.
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