第15章 THE HYMN-BOOK(3)

My sister prepared a neat little writing-book for me,and told me not to make a mark in it except when she was near to tell me what to do.In my self-sufficient impatience to get out of "pothooks and trammels"into real letters and words I disobeyed her injunction,and disfigured the pages with numerous tell-tale blots.Then I hid the book away under the garret eaves,and refused to bring it to light again.I was not allowed to resume my studies in penmanship for some months,in consequence.But when I did learn to write,Emilie was my teacher,and she made me take great pains with my p's and q's.

It is always a mistake to cram a juvenile mind.A precocious child is certainly as far as possible from being an interesting one.Children ought to be children,and nothing else.But I am not sorry that I learned to read when so young,because there were years of my childhood that came after,when I had very little time for reading anything.

To learn hymns was not only a pastime,but a pleasure which it would have been almost cruel to deprive me of.It did not seem to me as if I learned them,but as if they just gave themselves to me while I read them over;as if they,and the unseen things they sang about,became a part of me.

Some of the old hymns did seem to lend us wings,so full were they of aspiration and hope and courage.To a little child,reading them or hearing them sung was like being caught up in a strong man's arms,to gaze upon some wonderful landscape.These climbing and flying hymns,--how well I remember them,although they were among the first I learned!They are of the kind that can never wear out.We all know them by their first lines,--"Awake,our souls!away,our fears!""Up to the hills I lift mine eyes.""There is a land of pure delight.""Rise,my soul,and stretch thy wings,Thy better portion trace!"How the meeting-house rafters used to ring to that last hymn,sung to the tune of "Amsterdam!"Sometimes it seemed as if the very roof was lifted off,--nay,the roof of the sky itself--as if the music had burst an entrance for our souls into the heaven of heavens.

I loved to learn the glad hymns,and there were scores of them.

They come flocking back through the years,like birds that are full of the music of an immortal spring!

"Come,let us join our cheerful songs With angels round the throne.""Love divine,all love excelling;Joy of heaven,to earth come down.""Joy to the world!the Lord is come!""Hark!the song of jubilee,Loud as mighty thunders'roar,Or the fullness of the sea When it breaks upon the shore!

"Hallelujah!for the Lord God Omnipotent shall reign!

Hallelujah!let the word Echo round the earth and main."Ah,that word "Hallelujah!"It seemed to express all the joy of spring mornings and clear sunshine and bursting blossoms,blended with all that I guessed of the songs of angels,and with all that I had heard and believed,in my fledgling soul,of the glorious One who was born in a manger and died on a cross,that He might reign in human hearts as a king.I wondered why the people did not sing "Hallelujah"more.It seemed like a word sent straight down to us out of heaven.

I did not like to learn the sorrowful hymns,though I did it when they were given to me as a task,such as--"Hark,from the tombs,"and "Lord,what a wretched land is this,That yields us no supply."I suppose that these mournful strains had their place,but sometimes the transition was too sudden,from the outside of the meeting-house to the inside;from the sunshine and bobolinks and buttercups of the merry May-day world,to the sad strains that chanted of "this barren land,"this "vale of tears,"this "wilderness"of distress and woe.It let us light-hearted children too quickly down from the higher key of mirth to which our careless thoughts were pitched.We knew that we were happy,and sorrow to us was unreal.But somehow we did often get the impression that it was our duty to try to be sorrowful;and that we could not be entirely good,without being rather miserable.

And I am afraid that in my critical little mind I looked upon it as an affectation on the part of the older people to speak of life in this doleful way.I thought that they really knew better.