The other, if
less momentous, was more mortifying. In early days--at
my mother's knee, as a man may say--I had acquired the
unenviable accomplishment (which I have never since
been able to lose) of singing "Just before the Battle."
I have what the French call a fillet of voice--my best
notes scarce audible about a dinner-table, and the
upper register rather to be regarded as a higher power
of silence. Experts tell me, besides, that I sing
flat; nor, if I were the best singer in the world, does
"Just before the Battle" occur to my mature taste as
the song that I would choose to sing. In spite of all
which considerations, at one picnic, memorably dull,
and after I had exhausted every other art of pleasing,
I gave, in desperation, my one song. From that hour my
doom was gone forth. Either we had a chronic passenger
(though I could never detect him), or the very wood and
iron of the steamer must have retained the tradition.
At every successive picnic word went round that Mr.
Dodd was a singer; that Mr. Dodd sang "Just before the
Battle"; and, finally, that now was the time when Mr.
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