Explore "The Way Home" by Henry Handel Richardson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
-"My papeh dotes on music. Positively, I have known my papeh to say he would rather go without his port at dinner than his music after dinner. My papeh has heard all the most famous singers. In his opinion, no one could compare with Malibran." Thus Miss Timms-Kelly; and at his cue the chubby, white-haired old Judge, surreptitiously snatching forty winks in a dark corner of the drawing-room, would start, open his eyes, and, like a well-trained parrot, echo his daughter's words.
-"Malibran?. ah, now there was a voice for you!--Pasta could not hold a candle to her. As a young man I never missed an opera when she sang. Great nights, great nights! The King's Theatre packed to suffocation. All of us young music-lovers burning with enthusiasm. our palms tingling from applause." Here however, at some private sign, the speaker abruptly switched off his reminiscences, which threatened to carry him away, and got to the matter in hand.--"My dear, give us, if you please, CASTA DIVA. Though I say so myself, there is something in my daughter's rendering of that divine air that recalls Malibran in her prime."