It seemed to me that it must be delightful to grow up,and learn things,and do things,and be very good indeed,--better than children could possibly know how to be.I knew afterwards that my elders were sometimes,at least,sincere in their sadness;for with many of them life must have been a hard struggle.But when they shook their heads and said,--"Child,you will not be so happy by and by;you are seeing your best days now,"I still doubted.I was born with the blessing of a cheerful temperament;and while that is not enough to sustain any of us through the inevitable sorrows that all must share,it would have been most unnatural and ungrateful in me to think of earth as a dismal place,when everything without and within was trying to tell me that this good and beautiful world belongs to God.
I took exception to some verses in many of the hymns that I loved the most.I had my own mental reservations with regard even to that glorious chant of the ages,--"Jerusalem,my happy home,Name ever dear to me."I always wanted to skip one half of the third stanza,as it stood in our Hymn-Book:
"Where congregations ne'er break up,And Sabbaths have no end."I did not want it to be Sabbath-day always.I was conscious of a pleasure in the thought of games and frolics and coming week-day delights that would flit across my mind even when I was studying my hymns,or trying to listen to the minister.And I did want the congregation to break up some time.Indeed,in those bright spring days,the last hymn in the afternoon always sounded best,because with it came the opening of doors into the outside air,and the pouring in of a mingled scent of sea winds and apple blossoms,like an invitation out into the freedom of the beach,the hillsides,the fields and gardens and orchards.In all this Ifelt as if I were very wicked.I was afraid that I loved earth better than I did heaven.
Nevertheless I always did welcome that last hymn,announced to be sung "with the Doxology,"usually in "long metre,"to the tune of "Old Hundred."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."My tallest and prettiest grown-up sister,Louise,stood there among them,and of all those girlish,blooming faces I thought hers the very handsomest.But she did not open her lips wide enough to satisfy me.I could not see that she was singing at all.
To stand up there and be one of the choir,seemed to me very little short of promotion to the ranks of cherubim and seraphim.
I quite envied that tall,pretty sister of mine.I was sure that I should open my mouth wide,if I could only be in her place.
Alas!the years proved that,much as I loved the hymns,there was no music in me to give them voice,except to very indulgent ears.
Some of us must wait for the best human gifts until we come to heavenly places.Our natural desire for musical utterance is perhaps a prophecy that in a perfect world we shall all know how to sing.But it is something to feel music,if we cannot make it.
That,in itself,is a kind of unconscious singing.
As I think back to my childhood,it seems to me as if the air was full of hymns,as it was of the fragrance of clover-blossoms,and the songs of bluebirds and robins,and the deep undertone of the sea.And the purity,the calmness,and the coolness of the dear old Sabbath days seems lingering yet in the words of those familiar hymns,whenever I bear them sung.Their melody penetrates deep into my life,assuming me that I have not left the green pastures and the still waters of my childhood very far behind me.
There is something at the heart of a true song or hymn which keeps the heart young that listens.It is like a breeze from the eternal hills;like the west wind of spring,never by a breath less balmy and clear for having poured life into the old generations of earth for thousands of years;a spiritual freshness,which has nothing to do with time or decay.
