With hardly a demur one sweet voice after another arose; then a man
gained courage, and chimed in with a full harmonious bass; then a
rich sad alto made itself heard, as it wandered in and out between
the voices of the men and women; and at last a wild mellow tenor,
which we discovered after much searching to proceed from the most
unlikely-looking lips of an old dry, weather-bleared, mummified
chrysalis of a man, who stood aft, steering with his legs, and
showing no sign of life except when he slowly and solemnly filled his
nose with snuff.
'What strange people have you brought me among?' asked Claude. 'I
have been wondering ever since I came here at the splendid faces and
figures of men, women, and children, which popped out upon me from
every door in that human rabbit-burrow above. I have been in
raptures at the gracefulness, the courtesy, the intelligence of
almost everyone I meet; and now, to crown all, everyone among them
seems to be a musician.'
'Really you are not far wrong, and you will find them as remarkable
morally as they are physically and intellectually.
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