n the hymn; I suppose the "rose" made me invent one. But it did
read--

"I know his courts; I'll enter in,
Whatever may oppose;"

and so I fancied there would be lions in the way, as there were in the
Pilgrim's, at the "House Beautiful"; but I should not be afraid of
them; they would no doubt be chained. The last verse began with the
lines,--

"I can but perish if I go:
I am resolved to try:"

and my heart beat a brave echo to the words, as I started off in fancy
on a "Pilgrim's Progress" of my own, a happy little dreamer, telling
nobody the secret of my imaginary journey, taken in sermon-time.

Usually, the hymns for which I cared most suggested Nature in some
way,--flowers, trees, skies, and stars. When I repeated,--

"There everlasting spring abides,
And never-withering flowers,"--

I thought of the faintly flushed anemones and white and blue violets,
the dear little short-lived children of our shivering spring. They also
would surely be found in that heavenly land, blooming on through the
cloudless, endless year. And I seemed to smell the spiciness of bay
berry and sweet-fern and wild roses and meadow-sweet that grew in
fragrant jungles up and down the hillside back of the meeting-house, in
another verse which I dearly loved:--

"The hill of Zion yields
A thousand sacred sweet,
Before we reach the heavenly fields,
Or walk the golden streets."

We were allowed to take a little nosegay to meeting sometimes: a pink
or two (pinks were pink then, not red, nor white, nor even double) and
a sprig of camomile; and their blended perfume still seems to be a part
of the June Sabbath mornings long passed away.

When the choir sang of
"Seas of heavenly rest,"

a breath of salt wind came in with the words through the open door,
from the sheltered waters of the bay, so softly blue and so lovely, I
always wondered how a world could be beautiful where "there was no more
sea." I concluded that the hymn and the text could not really
contradict other; that there must be something like the sea in heaven,
after all. One stanza that I used to croon over, gave me the feeling of
being rocked in a boat on a strange and beautiful ocean, from whose
far-off shores the sunrise beckoned:--

"At anchor laid, remote from home,
Toiling I cry, Sweet Spirit, come!
Celestial breeze, no longer stay!
But spread my sails, and speed my way!"

Some of the chosen hymns of my infancy the world recognizes a