Field and Forest by Oliver Optic

Lieutenants Pope and Jackson were of the pleasant party in the reconstructed house. Both of them were good singers, and I experienced a new sensation. Ella was able to sit up all day now, and she and her mother sang. To the accompaniment of the grand piano, the party sang what they called old and familiar tunes. I had never heard anything which could be called singing before, and I was more delighted than I can express. The instrument, highly as I had appreciated it before, seemed to have a double power and a double melody.

The tunes were Old Hundred, Peterboro', Hamburg, and others like them, which have since become familiar to me. They raised my soul from earth to heaven, and inspired me with new love and new hope. I had read some of the hymns they sang; but their musical interpretation gave them a purer and loftier sentiment than their words could convey. Ella sang a little song alone; and, as I listened to her sweet voice, I could hardly restrain my tears, the melody was so new and strange, and withal so heavenly. What would earth be if men and women could not sing!