BEAR-TONE One day about the first of February, Catherine Edwards made the rounds of the neighborhood with a subscription paper to get singers for a singing school.

A veteran "singing master"-- Seth Clark, well known throughout the country--had offered to give the young people of the place a course of twelve evening lessons or sessions in vocal music, at four dollars per evening; and Catherine was endeavoring to raise the sum of forty-eight dollars for this purpose.
Master Clark was to meet us at the district schoolhouse for song sessions of two hours, twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday evenings at seven o'clock.

Among us at the old Squire's we signed eight dollars.
The singing school did not much interest me personally, for the reason that I did not expect to attend.

As the Frenchman said when invited to join a fox hunt, I had been.

Two winters previously there had been a singing school in an adjoining school district, known as "Bagdad," where along with others I had presented myself as a candidate for vocal culture, and had been rejected on the grounds that I lacked both "time" and "ear." What was even less to my credit, I had been censured as being concerned in a disturbance outside the schoolhouse.