A few years later such an encounter might have spoiled his dinner: I have to record no such evil result of the adventure.
With Miss St.John, music was the highest form of human expression, as must often be the case with those whose feeling is much in advance of their thought, and to whom, therefore, may be called mental sensation is the highest known condition.

Music to such is poetry in solution, and generates that infinite atmosphere, common to both musician and poet, which the latter fills with shining worlds .-- But if my reader wishes to follow out for himself the idea herein suggested, he must be careful to make no confusion between those who feel musically or think poetically, and the musician or the poet.

One who can only play the music of others, however exquisitely, is not a musician, any more than one who can read verse to the satisfaction, or even expound it to the enlightenment of the poet himself, is therefore a poet .-- When Miss St.John would worship God, it was in music that she found the chariot of fire in which to ascend heavenward.

Hence music was the divine thing in the world for her; and to find any one loving music humbly and faithfully was to find a brother or sister believer.

But she had been so often disappointed in her expectations from those she took to be such, that of late she had become less sanguine.