A veteran "singing master"--Seth Clark, well known
throughout the country--had offered to give the young people of the
place a course of twelve evening lessons or sessions in vocal music, at
four dollars per evening; and Catherine was endeavoring to raise the sum
of forty-eight dollars for this purpose.
Master Clark was to meet us at the district schoolhouse for song
sessions of two hours, twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday evenings at
seven o'clock. Among us at the old Squire's we signed eight dollars.
The singing school did not much interest me personally, for the reason
that I did not expect to attend. As the Frenchman said when invited to
join a fox hunt, I had been. Two winters previously there had been a
singing school in an adjoining school district, known as "Bagdad," where
along with others I had presented myself as a candidate for vocal
culture, and had been rejected on the grounds that I lacked both "time"
and "ear." What was even less to my credit, I had been censured as being
concerned in a disturbance outside the schoolhouse. That was my first
winter in Maine, and the teacher at that singing school was not Seth
Clark, but an itinerant singing master widely known as "Bear-Tone.
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