427. I think when I read that sweet story
Jemima Luke, 1813-1906
A hymn that has gone all over the world and has been learned by a countless number of children of many nations and races. Concerning its origin, Mrs. Luke has written:
I went one day on some missionary business to the little town of Wellington, five miles from Taunton, in a stage coach. It was a beautiful spring morning, it was an hour’s ride, and there was no other inside passenger. On the back of an old envelope I wrote in pencil the first two of the verses now so well known, in order to teach the tune to the village school supported by my stepmother, and which it was my province to visit. The third verse was added afterwards to make it a missionary hymn.
Jemima Luke was the daughter of Thomas Thompson, one of the founders of the British and Foreign Sailors’ Society and a “friend of every good cause.” She volunteered to do missionary work in India, but ill health made that impossible. All her life, however, she maintained an active interest in foreign missions. In 1843, she married the Rev. Samuel Luke, a Congregational minister in Clifton, England.
MUSIC. SWEET STORY is an arrangement by Wm. B. Bradbury (see [Hymn 103]) of a Greek tune known as “Salamis” or “Athens.” Mrs. Luke heard the melody (in its original form) used as a marching song by a group of children in a school near her home where she had gone to learn something of the teaching methods used. She was intrigued by the tune and wrote the words to fit it. The words and music are inseparably associated, the original form of the melody being used in England, and Bradbury’s adaptation (easier but less interesting) in America.