screen-curtains

Updated: August 1, 2026

There were certain mysterious preliminaries, the rustling of singing-book leaves, the sliding of the short screen-curtains before the singers along by their clinking rings, and now and then a premonitory groan or squeak from bass-viol or violin, as if the instruments were clearing their throats; and finally the sudden uprising of that long row of heads in the "singing-seats."

Lucy Larcom - A New England girlhood, outlined from memory (Beverly, MA)