"The narrative may not prove very interesting to you," she replied. "The recollection of events that took place around us in youth has more power to move ourselves than others. But of this you shall judge for yourself.
"In 1826, I was visiting a dear friend who lived on St. Paul street, in Montreal. It was a pleasant evening in June, the close of one of those very warm days so common in the early part of a Canadian summer, where the interval between the snows and frost of winter and the fervid heat, the verdure and bloom, of summer, is often so marvellously short as to astonish a stranger.
"I was sitting in my room, at an open window that looked out on a narrow back-court, the opposite side of which was bounded by a row of low-roofed tenant-houses parallel with the bank of the river, and over these, upon a magnificent view of the St. Lawrence rolling grandly down past the city, at which I was never tired of gazing. I had been contemplating the mighty flood for some time, my thoughts wandering sorrowfully far up its waters and the stream of time to tranquil scenes now closed to me for ever, when the words, 'Ah, Donald! that I should live to see this day! Do not ask me to sing the hymn we love this night, when my heart is sae sair that it is like to break! I canna, canna sing the sangs o' Zion i' this strange place, and in our sharp, sharp griefs!' came floating to my ear on the evening breeze, from an open balcony along the rear of the tenements mentioned.
"There was a depth of anguish in the tones that touched the tenderest chord of sympathy in my heart, which was then writhing under the pangs of a recent sore bereavement.
"My childhood had been passed near settlements of the Lowland Scotch in St. Lawrence County, New York, and I was therefore familiar with their dialect, the use of which added to my interest in the speaker, and I listened eagerly for further sounds. For some time I heard only a suppressed sobbing, and the low tones of a manly voice that seemed to be soothing an outburst of grief which was overwhelming his companion. At length I heard him say, with an accent that betokened a tongue accustomed to the use of the Gaelic dialect,
"'It would drown the sorrows of my gentle Maggie, if she would only strive to sing. Let us not forget the dolors of our Blessed Mother in the agonies of our ain grief. I will sing, and mayhap she will join me.'