The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1894-09-15

sympathy ana PathoS Lacking IN
Their Juvenile Voices-Peasures of
Bus Riding in the Metropolis.
Britons Do Not Take Readily to
Water - Scenes in Westminster
Abbey -Basso Burns Disc overs the
Dust of Regal Ancestor.
Special Correspondence of The Tribune.
LONDON, Sept. 2.
n n AVING day or two to spare we
u ran up to London from where
I|l we 90 on to Cardiff this week.
u u Knowing that we should have
to snatch ourselves away from the be-
wildering fairyland ut moments 10
tice after today we made the most of
our opportunity, and staI ted out sight
seeing bright and early this Sunday
morning. First we went to the Italian
Catholic church, here famous for It's
fine music, and, as good luck would
have it, had the pleasure Of hearing
Gounod's "Solemn High Mass" very
well sung, considering the fact that
the soprano was young man of 20 or
q years of age, while the alto looked
even much older, and was man also.
1t reminded me very forcibly of the
accounts / had read of the Pope's choir
at st. Peter's, Rome, in which there
are also no female voices, the soprano
and alto parts being taken by men as
old sometimes as GO years.
was sitting there enjoying the mu
sic, and, of course, listening to the so
prano, when, as / listened, it grew upon
me that some parts of her voice were
very unsympathetic and unfeeling. So
looked looked up to see how old or
how young she was, or what sort of a
temperament her face might betray, if
/ could see it, and behold, there was
the voice coming from the throat of
very grown up man, and the alto by
his side even older still. However, it
was all very fine, and to add to the
beauty of it there was full orchestral
accompaniment with the organ also.
IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
In the afternoon we mounted bus,
and perched up on the outside of it,
sailed through the streets at great
rate, down to Westminster abbey,
where we walked through the dim,
beautiful cloisters until time for after
noon service, which we attended.
How wonderful it all is! Who can
help growing poetical over the abbey?
We wandered about looking at the in
nri inf n I'm
and of course. being a Protestant, | was
pleased to find the graves of the chill
dren of John Wesley, brother Of
Charles, in my wanderines, while Mr..
and Mrs. Burns, being Catholics, were
much interested in stone over the
grave of twenty or more monks buried
there in the Fourteenth century, after
the great black plague The service
was beautiful. No other word could
describe it. The boy choir here is, of
course, irreproachable, and their sing
Ling of the serious English anthem
music is nothing short OF exquisite,
while they look for all the world like q
flock of little angels, with their sweet,
serious little faces, shining in the
light.
We took in the great st. Pauls cath
edral in the evening, attending SER
vice there. Of course do not wish to
talk like guide book or rave like
maniac over the churches, but, in
truth, they are most beautiful, and st.
Paul's cathedral comes after Westmin-
ster in point of beauty and
singing also. Here again we lis
tened to the boy-choir singing for
which England has become 50
famous. 1t is beautiful and
really, exquisitely correct, but l do not
like these boy voices on every occasion.
There is only one word by which to
describe this music, and that is,
churchly. They make serious and
| churchly music, but how long to
hear a woman's exquisite voice in
church here. The boys voice, no mat
ter how we'll trained, has not that
wonderful expression and sympathy
and pathos which woman has. How
can It, when he is only boy, with
little or no emotional nature about
him? No, l do not like to hear d boy
sing church music. He doesn't mean
q word he sings, nor feel bit of it,
either. He is a sort Of pretty little
parrot, that's all,
THE LONDON BUS.
We saw other famous churches dur
ing the day, attending four serric in
all, SO our conscienves are clear on
church-going score, at least, What
struck me as one of the oddities of
London is that the drivers all drive to
the left, on the streets, instead of the
right, as we do at home. Everything
is arranged in that way, aud it is
sometimes very confusing to Us Amer
leans. like the London busses very
much indeed. You can board them
anywhere, and in summer the incest
places are way up Oh top, where there
are more seats than there are inside,
in fact. Seated up there, career
ing through the streets at great
rate, looking down into the streets
and windows it takes almost no eff rt
of the imagination to persuade myself
that 1 am on the top of very swell
hour-in-hand instead of bus. The
sights are 30 beautiful that | immedi.
ately forget, on taking my place there,
that paid only tuppence for it, and
as the horses are 50 far below me that
cannot see them at all, | sometimes
come back to myself from some high
flown journey through the mir with a
start, TO hear the conductor or the
driver call the name Of my destination.
Another thing | like very much is
that you can see all over town without
trying to look through lot of tele-
graph and phone wires The air is
perfectly devoid of them, even if it is
not 80 guiltless of fogs They are all
underground somewhere, thank good
ness.
BRITISH BEVERAGES.
The people here drink tea. They do
not go in for coffee, and indeed, make
it rather poorly, too, butthe tea is on at
every meal as regularly as the table
cloth itself. do not admire 1t much,
however, never having been devotee
| .nf fhot drink Rut thp most diffioult