time for it, and it pleased her to know that so
small a child as I really cared for the hymns she loved.

I learned most of them at meeting. I was told to listen to the
minister; but as I did not understand a word he was saying, I gave it
up, and took refuge in the hymn-book, with the conscientious purpose of
trying to sit still. I turned the leaves over as noiselessly as
possible, to avoid the dreaded reproof of my mother's keen blue eyes;
and sometimes I learned two or three hymns in a forenoon or an
afternoon. Finding it so easy, I thought I would begin at the
beginning, and learn the whole. There were about a thousand of them
included in the Psalms, the First, Second, and Third Books, and the
Select Hymns. But I had learned to read before I had any knowledge of
counting up numbers, and so was blissfully ignorant of the magnitude of
my undertaking. I did not, I think, change my resolution because there
were so many, but because, little as I was, I discovered that there
were hymns and hymns. Some of them were so prosy that the words would
not stay in my memory at all, so I concluded that I would learn only
those I liked.

I had various reasons for my preferences. With some, I was caught by a
melodious echo, or a sonorous ring; with others by the hint of a
picture, or a story, or by some sacred suggestion that attracted me, I
knew not why. Of some I was fond just because I misunderstood them; and
of these I made a free version in my mind, as I murmured them over. One
of my first favorites was certainly rather a singular choice for a
child of three or four years. I had no idea of its meaning, but made up
a little story out of it, with myself as the heroine. It began with the
words--

"Come, humble sinner, in whose breast
A thousand thoughts revolve."

The second stanza read thus:--

"I'll go to Jesus, though my sin
Hath like a mountain rose."

I did not know that this last line was bad grammar, but thought that
the sin in question was something pretty, that looked "like a mountain
rose." Mountains I had never seen; they were a glorious dream to me.
And a rose that grew on a mountain must surely be prettier than any of
our red wild roses on the hill, sweet as they were. I would pluck that
rose, and carry it up the mountain-side into the temple where the King
sat, and would give it to Him; and then He would touch me with his
sceptre, and let me through into a garden full of flowers. There was no
garden i