“I LOVE TO STEAL AWHILE AWAY.”
The burdened wife and mother who wrote this hymn would, at the time, have rated her history with “the short and simple annals of the poor.” But the poor who are “remembered for what they have done,” may have a larger place in history than many rich who did nothing.
Phebe Hinsdale Brown, was born in Canaan, N.Y., in 1783. Her father, George Hinsdale, who died in her early childhood, must have been a man of good abilities and religious feeling, being the reputed composer of the psalm-tune, “Hinsdale,” found in some long-ago collections.
Left an orphan at two years of age, Phebe “fell into the hands of a relative who kept the county jail,” and her childhood knew little but the bitter fare and ceaseless drudgery of domestic slavery. She grew up with a crushed spirit, and was a timid, shrinking woman as long as she lived. She married Timothy H. Brown, a house-painter of Ellington, Ct., and passed her days there and in Monson, Mass., where she lived some twenty-five years.
In her humble home in the former town her children were born, and it was while caring for her own little family of four, and a sick sister, that the incident occurred (August 1818), which called forth her tender hymn. She was a devout Christian, and in pleasant weather, whenever she could find the leisure, she would “steal away” at sunset from her burdens a little while, to rest and commune with God. Her favorite place was a wealthy neighbor's large and beautiful flower garden. A servant reported her visits there to the mistress of the house, who called the “intruder” to account.
“If you want anything, why don't you come in?” was the rude question, followed by a plain hint that no stealthy person was welcome.
Wounded by the ill-natured rebuff, the sensitive woman sat down the next evening with her baby in her lap, and half-blinded by her tears, wrote “An Apology for my Twilight Rambles,” in the verses that have made her celebrated.
She sent the manuscript (nine stanzas) to her captious neighbor—with what result has never been told.
Crude and simple as the little rhyme was, it contained a germ of lyric beauty and life. The Rev. Dr. Charles Hyde of Ellington, who was a neighbor of Mrs. Brown, procured a copy. He was assisting Dr. Nettleton to compile the Village Hymns, and the humble bit of devotional verse was at once judged worthy of a place in the new 275 / 231 book. Dr. Hyde and his daughter Emeline giving it some kind touches of rhythmic amendment,
I love to steal awhile away
From little ones and care,
—became,—
I love to steal awhile away
From every cumb'ring care.
In the last line of this stanza—
In gratitude and prayer
—was changed to—
In humble, grateful prayer,
—and the few other defects in syllabic smoothness or literary grace were affectionately repaired, but the slight furbishing it received did not alter the individuality of Mrs. Brown's work. It remained hers—and took its place among the immortals of its kind, another illustration of how little poetry it takes to make a good hymn. Only five stanzas were printed, the others being voted redundant by both author and editor. The second and third, as now sung, are—
I love in solitude to shed
The penitential tear,
And all His promises to plead
Where none but God can hear.
I love to think on mercies past
And future good implore,
And all my cares and sorrows cast
On Him whom I adore.
Phebe Brown died at Henry, Ill., in 1861; but she had made the church and the world her debtor not only for her little lyric of pious trust, but by rearing a son, the Rev. Samuel Brown, D.D., who became the pioneer American missionary to Japan—to which Christian calling two of her grandchildren also consecrated themselves.