"HOME, SWEET HOME."

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 282, 26 June 1873, Page 7

"HOME, SWEET HOME."

We clip the following from the March issue of the " Home News," and think it well worth re-production. It is from a review of an article in, " Tinsley's "— " Home, Sweet Home," which has been running through the pages of the magazine for so long a time without the author's name, is now announced as Mrs. Eiddell's. " Splendid Poverty " and " The Experience of an Heiress," are good contributions, *but the best of the occasional papers is, v Humble Musical Eecollections," an extract of which will be interesting : " I was still almost a boy. I had come to London in search of a profession, and I lived for some time, before I found one, in a small court near Northumberland House. I was generally out late at night ; and as a natural consequence I lay in bed til) ]$te in the morning, sometimes re.'id ng but more often dreaming, or busily engaged in the building of castles and palaces in the air — -a branch of the trade in which, alas ! thore has been a determined strike since those days. ! The court was a favorite haunt of street musicians. They were the delight of my early musings, and they generally ended by lulling me to a second sleep. About three times a week I used to be awakened by the sound of a harp, which was touched with some softness, and not without expression. I usually got up at the first chord ; for I knew it was ten o'clock, so regular were its visits. The player was a slender young girl, with large dark eyes, and an Italian complexion — fresh and beautiful, at leaßt so I thought her. She wore a dress oi green plaid and a straw bonnet ; and as she reached tho farther strings of the harp, she displayed an undulating waist and a wrist and an arm of faultless shape — so it seemed to me. She not only playod but sang; aud her low plaintive voice is sounding sweetly in my moss-grown ears while I am writing these lines. Her song was always the same — a simple air with Moore's well-known words : " When in death I shall calm recline, O bear my heart to my mistress dear 1" " I was a timid boy in matters of j love, though I became wiser with years ; and I could find no better way of conveying to her the tender assurance of my affection than by endowing her with some of my wordly goods. All I had was but little, and what I gave her was considerably less ; but I meant it as a symbol, and 1 hoped that the friendly and earnest manner and the regularity of my contributions, which gave them almost the character of a pension, would carry something to this most beautiful of all human creatures, and most enchanting of artists. " After watching her from my win- ! dow, (where, being engaged at my toilet, I often appeared in my shirtsleeves), and encountering her large wandering eyes, I used to come out of the house, before she had carried her harp and all the sweot harmony that went with' it, to more productive regions ; and I never failed to give her, not without embarrassment, the few coins I could spare. Once I was bold enough to apologise for the smallness of jhe sum, and I received from her a smile which seemed to bo all pearls and velvet. A crowd of children who were the groundlings of her audience must have seen something comic in the incident, for they all gave a loud and exulting " hooray ;" but whether it was intended for the receiver or the giver, or was suggestive of some largess to themselves, I never discovered. Before I had got beyond the touching preliminaries, I was suddenly called away from London to take my small part in active life. All my energies were shortly brought into play by brilliant prospects and new scenes, and my heart was very soon a slave to new loves. The magic sounds of the harp came back to me less and less often. At last it was only in moments of weariness and disappointment that I remembered the days the poor singer had made so bright in that dismal London court. " Tear followed year, and brought bitterness and sorrow, and much toil aud sickness in different climes, and a larger share ' O, that unrest which men* miscall delight.' A quarter of a century had gone by, when I fonnd myself by chance walking dreamliy along the crowded pavement of Charing-cross, as St. Martin's clock struck ten. One would have thought that five-and -twenty years, the most busy and eventful of life, would have been sufficient to dim the memory of such a sound. Not so. Heard at that particular distance, it seemed to strike a cord within me ; and I turned almost mechanically into the court to look at the house I had lived in long ago, and to muso for a moment on bygone days. As I passed through the low entrance, a sound of music fell upon my ear. The flood of memories that was stirred by it brought mo to a standstill, and I stopped just opposite the green door that had so often yielded to my latch key. On the same old stone of the pavement stood the pitiable figure of a woman in racs. She was past middle age, and deeply marked with the smallpox. Her lean and muscular arm was stretched across the strings of an old greazy harp, which had been mended with twine and kept to.

gether with nails. A woolly sound came out of its body, and a measure wliich filled my heart with indescribable melancholy. " The finest strains of Beethoven, or the melting tones of Mgrio, never drew such a picture of the past as I could see through the tears which dimmed my eyes ; nor did apy moralist ever read such a lesson of pity or of patience. The little prelude was played out, and the poor old woman after a preliminary cough, turned her sad and hopeless eyes upon the elosetjj windows of the court, and sang, in a hoarse and tremulous voice, that saddest of all my musical recollections : ' When in death I shall calm recline, 0, bear my heart to my mistress dear !' "