then living in Reading, Mass.

[Footnote 32: Comparison of the "Jewel Hymn" tune with the old glee of
"Johnny Schmoker" gives color to the assertion that Mr. Root caught up
and adapted a popular ditty for his Christian melody--as was so often
done in Wales, and in the Lutheran and Wesleyan reformations. He
baptized the comic fugue, and promoted it from the vaudeville stage to
the Sunday School.]

A minister returning from Europe on an English steamer visited the
steerage, and after some friendly talk proposed a singing service--it
something could be started that "everybody" knew--for there were
hundreds of emigrants there from nearly every part of Europe.

"It will have to be an American tune, then," said the steerage-master;
"try 'His jewels.'"

The minister struck out at once with the melody and words,--

When He cometh, when He cometh,

--and scores of the poor half-fare multitude joined voices with him.
Many probably recognized the music of the old glee, and some had heard
the sweet air played in the church-steeples at home. Other voices chimed
in, male and female, catching the air, and sometimes the words--they
were so easy and so many times repeated--and the volume of song
increased, till the singing minister stood in the midst of an
international concert, the most novel that he ever led.

He tried other songs in similar visits during the rest of the voyage
with some success, but the "Jewel Hymn" was the favorite; and by the
time port was in sight the whole crowd of emigrants had it by heart.

The steamer landed at Quebec, and when the trains, filled with the new
arrivals, rolled away, the song was swelling from nearly every car,--

When He cometh, when He cometh,
To make up His jewels.

The composer of the tune--with all the patriotic and sacred
master-pieces standing to his credit--never reaped a richer triumph than
he shared with his poet-partner that day, when "Precious Jewels" came
back to them from over the sea. More than this, there was missionary joy
for them both that their tuneful work had done something to hallow the
homes of alien settlers with an American Christian psalm.

George Frederick Root, Doctor of Music, was born in Sheffield, Mass.,
1820, eldest of a family of eight children, and spent his youth on a
farm. His genius for music drew him to Boston, where he became a pupil
of Lowell Mason, and soon advanced so far as to teach music himself and
lead the choir in Park S