A New England Girlhood [21]
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 seems lingering yet in the words of those familiar hymns, whenever I bear them sung. Their melody penetrates deep into my life, assuming me that I have not left the green pastures and the still waters of my childhood very far behind me.
There is something at the heart of a true song or hymn which keeps the heart young that listens. It is like a breeze from the eternal hills; like the west wind of spring, never by a breath less balmy and clear for having poured life into the old generations of earth for thousands of years; a spiritual freshness, which has nothing to do with time or decay.
IV.
NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TALES.
ALTHOUGH the children of an earlier time heard a great deal of theological discussion which meant little or nothing to them, there was one thing that was made clear and emphatic in all the Puritan training: that the heavens and earth stood upon firm foundations--upon the Moral Law as taught in the Old Testament and confirmed by the New. Whatever else we did not understand, we believed that to disobey our parents, to lie or steal, had been forbidden by a Voice which was not to be gainsaid. People who broke or evaded these commands did so willfully, and without excusing themselves, or being excused by others. I think most of us expected the fate of Ananias and Sapphira, if we told what we knew was a falsehood.
There were reckless exceptions, however. A playmate, of whom I was quite fond, was once asked, in my presence, whether she had done something forbidden, which I knew she had been about only a little while before. She answered "No," and without any apparent hesitation. After the person who made the inquiry had gone, I exclaimed, with horrified wonder, "How could you?"
Her reply was, "Oh, I only kind of said no." What a real lie was to her, if she understood a distinct denial of the truth as only "kind-of" lying, it perplexed me to imagine. The years proved that this lack of moral perception was characteristic, and nearly spoiled a nature full of beautiful gifts.
I could not deliberately lie, but I had my own temptations, which I did not always successfully resist. I remember the very spot-- in a footpath through a green field--where I first met the Eighth Commandment, and felt it looking me full in the face.
I suppose I was five or six years