The Ave Maria

An unusually thrilling effect was created by the playing of the Philippine Band inside the vaulted colonnade just beneath the tower one rainy afternoon.

The portal of the tower was closed by heavy canvas curtains, drawn together to protect the musicians from the weather; the shower was about over when I arrived in the Court and I sat on one of the benches under a tree in that lovely garden, walled in from the world, and I listened to the strains of the beautiful "Ave Maria" as they pealed forth with wonderful sweetness upon the air; it required but little fancy to imagine that the music was produced by a powerful organ within the tower. The effect was wonderful!

Under such conditions "music once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies. It wanders through the halls and galleries of the memory, and is often heard again, distinct and living as when it first displaced the wavelets of the air."