f 1861-2 by Miss Ellen M. Huntington (Mrs.
Isaac Gates), and made her reputation as one of the few didactic poets
whose exquisite art wins a hearing for them everywhere. In a moment of
revery, while looking through the window at the falling snow, the words
came to her:

If you cannot on the ocean
Sail among the swiftest fleet.

She turned away and wrote the lines on her slate, following with verse
after verse till she finished the whole poem. "It wrote itself," she
says in her own account of it.

Reading afterwards what she had written, she was surprised at her work.
The poem had a meaning and a "mission." So strong was the impression
that the devout girl fell on her knees and consecrated it to a divine
purpose. Free copies of it went to the Cooperstown, N.Y., local paper,
and to the New York _Examiner_, and appeared in both. From that time the
history and career of "Your Mission" presents a marked illustration of
"catenal influence," or transmitted suggestion.

In the later days of the Civil War Philip Phillips, who had a
wonderfully sweet tenor voice, was invited to sing at a great meeting of
the United States Christian Commission in the Senate Chamber at
Washington, February, 1865, President Lincoln and Secretary Seward
(then president of the commission) were there, and the hall was crowded
with leading statesmen, army generals, and friends of the Union. The
song selected by Mr. Phillips was Mrs. Gates' "Your Mission":

If you cannot on the ocean
Sail among the swiftest fleet,
Rocking on the highest billows,
Laughing at the storms you meet,
You can stand among the sailors
Anchored yet within the bay;
You can lend a hand to help them
As they launch their boats away.

The hushed audience listened spell-bound as the sweet singer went on,
their interest growing to feverish eagerness until the climax was
reached in the fifth stanza:

If you cannot in the conflict
Prove yourself a soldier true,
If where fire and smoke are thickest
There's no work for you to do,
When the battlefield is silent
You can go with careful tread;
You can bear away the wounded,
You can cover up the dead.

In the storm of enthusiasm that followed, President Lincoln handed a
hastily scribbled line on a bit of paper to Chairman Seward,

"Near the close let us have 'Your Mission' repeated."

Mr. Phillips' great success on this occasion brought him