-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 I felt 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
seem