All Wanted the Same Song
“I was in a radio studio, the other night, listening to the broadcast of a program. Naturally I was interested. Interested in what the performers did and how they were handled and the precision with which the timing was accomplished. But the one thing that interested me more than the actual happenings in the studio, was something quite apart from the especial broadcast that was taking place. For, as I sat there, I was conscious of a great flurry going on in an outer office. I could see, as I sat there, a constant stream of messenger boys—and I was conscious of an equally constant answering of telephones. I couldn’t help feeling that some great event was taking place—or was about to take place.
“And so the moment that the broadcast was over, I went into that outer office and began to ask questions. ‘Why the excitement?’ I asked of a pretty stenographer. ‘I’ve never seen such a bustling about.’ The girl smiled as she replied: ‘A very popular singer is going to broadcast tonight,’ she told me, ‘and people are sending in requests that he sing their favorite song. Curiously enough, with hardly an exception, it’s the same song!’
“‘What song is it?’ I asked. And I was both amazed and stirred to learn that the radio audience was asking for one of the splendid old revival hymns—‘The Old Rugged Cross!’”
“On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suff’ring and shame;
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain.”
Thomas D. Whittles tells this story in his book, The Parish of the Pines,[23] about