“WHERE NOW ARE THE HEBREW CHILDREN?”

This quaint old unison, repeating the above three times, followed by the answer (thrice repeated) and climaxed with—

Safely in the Promised Land,

—was a favorite at ancient camp-meetings, and a good leader could keep it going in a congregation or a happy group of vocalists, improvising a new start-line after every stop until his memory or invention gave out.

They went up from the fiery furnace,

Safely to the Promised Land.

Sometimes it was—

Where now is the good Elijah?

—and,—

He went up in a chariot of fire;

—and again,—

Where now is the good old Daniel?

He went up from the den of lions;

—and so on, finally announcing—

By and by we'll go home for to meet him, [three times]

Safely in the Promised Land.

The enthusiasm excited by the swinging rhythm of the tune sometimes rose to a passionate pitch, and it was seldom used in the more controlled religious assemblies. If any attempt was ever made to print the song^* the singers had little need to read the music. Like the ancient runes, it came into being by spontaneous generation, and lived in phonetic tradition.

* Mr. Hubert P. Main believes he once saw “The Hebrew Children” in print in one of Horace Waters' editions of the Sabbath Bell.

A strange, wild pæan of exultant song was one often heard from Peter Cartwright, the muscular circuit-preacher. A remembered fragment shows its quality:

Then my soul mounted higher

In a chariot of fire,

And the moon it was under my feet.

There is a tradition that he sang it over a stalwart blacksmith while chastising him for an ungodly 318 / 272 defiance and assault in the course of one of his gospel journeys—and that the defeated blacksmith became his friend and follower.

Peter Cartwright was born in Amherst county, Va., Sept. 1, 1785, and died near Pleasant Plains, Sangamon county, Ill., Sept., 1872.