There are certain nervous conditions peculiar to women in which the
common effects of poetry and of music upon their sensibilities are
strangely exaggerated. It was not perhaps to be wondered at that Octavia
fainted when Virgil in reading from his great poem came to the line
beginning Tu Marcellus eris: It is not hard to believe the story told of
one of the two Davidson sisters, that the singing of some of Moore's
plaintive melodies would so impress her as almost to take away the
faculties of sense and motion. But there must have been some special
cause for the singular nervous state into which this reading threw the
young girl, our Scheherezade. She was doubtless tired with overwork and
troubled with the thought that she was not doing herself justice, and
that she was doomed to be the helpless prey of some of those corbies who
not only pick out corbies' eyes, but find no other diet so nutritious and
agreeable.
Whatever the cause may have been, her heart heaved tumultuously, her
color came and went, and though she managed to avoid a scene by the
exercise of all her self-control, I watched her very anxiously, for I was
afraid she would have had a hysteric turn, or in one of her pallid
moments that she would have fainted and fallen like one dead before us.
I was very glad, therefore, when evening came, to find that she was going
out for a lesson on the stars.
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