rd piano music for the first time. So entranced did he become
that he entered the home unbidden, and stood listening at the parlor
door. When the young woman at the instrument ceased playing, the child
who hungered for music cried:

"O lady, play some more!"

Instead of complying with the request, the startled young woman is said
to have invited young Bliss to leave the house forthwith!

Although he received practically no musical education, except from
occasional attendance at a singing school, he wrote his first song at the
age of twenty-six years. It was called "Lora Vale," and because of its
popular reception, Bliss was encouraged to devote all his time to writing
songs and giving concerts.

Bliss usually wrote both the words and music of his hymns. His work was
done very quickly, the inspiration for the whole song, text and melody,
being born in his mind at once.

Any incident of an unusually impressive nature would immediately suggest
a theme to his mind. He heard the story of a shipwreck. The doomed vessel
was abandoned, and the captain ordered the sailors to exert their utmost
strength to "pull for the shore." Immediately he wrote his well-known
song with the words as a refrain.

One night he listened to a sermon in which the preacher closed with the
words, "He who is almost persuaded is almost saved, but to be almost
saved is to be entirely lost." He went home from the service and wrote
"Almost persuaded," a hymn that is said to have brought more souls to
Christ than anything else Bliss ever composed.

In 1870 he heard Major Whittle, an evangelist, tell the story of how the
message, "Hold the fort!" was signalled to the besieged garrison at
Allatoona Pass. The words suggested the passage from Revelations 2:25,
"That which ye have, hold fast till I come." The result was one of his
most famous Gospel songs, the chorus of which runs:

"Hold the fort, for I am coming,"
Jesus signals still,
Wave the answer back to heaven,--
"By Thy grace we will."

Other popular songs by Bliss are "Whosoever heareth, shout, shout the
sound," "I am so glad that our Father in heaven," "There's a light in the
valley," "Sing them over again to me," "Let the lower lights be burning,"
"Free from the law, Oh, happy condition," "Down life's dark vale we
wander" and "Where hast thou gleaned today?"

These songs, like the greater number of the Gospel Hymns, do not possess
high literary merit. The most that can