An Unforgotten Song
A British writer has told us of an evening which he spent at a fashionable watering place in Scotland. The visitors were seated in the drawing-room, spending the evening in a leisurely manner in reading or conversing.
Presently two ladies walked up to the piano, one to sing, the other to play her accompaniment. Conversation still continued, as the air was played over. But as soon as the words were reached, a hush fell upon the audience. The piece was Topliff’s setting of “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.” The drawing-room was a large one, capable of seating some hundreds of people, and furnished in a way calculated to deaden sound. Yet every word was heard distinctly.
The man who tells the story says that next to him was sitting a man, apparently from the west of England, “endowed with a wise and gracious Christlike spirit, the fruit of many years’ experience in his Master’s service.” This man listened with rapt attention. Then he turned to his neighbor, and whispered in a hushed voice, “I can tell by the way that girl sings that she is a Christian.”
The narrator of the incident, anxious to know more about the young lady, learned something of her experience. He records it as follows: “She had been engaged to be married to a medical man—a very fine Christian. One day, when he was staying at a place far distant from the home of his fiancée, he was suddenly stricken with typhoid fever, and died almost immediately. The lady was not told about it till after the funeral was over. The shock was so great that she was prostrated for some days. When she was able to get about again, her lovely voice, her greatest gift, was gone. Something like paralysis of the throat prevented her speaking above a whisper. Many months after, the voice gradually came back. When she was able to sing once more with her old power, she made a solemn vow that she would devote her voice very specially to God’s service. Thenceforth her most treasured possession was the Bible of her beloved. I saw it. It was crowded with notes from cover to cover, for the book was woven into its owner’s life.”
The secret of such a faith is finely expressed in