Patchwork: A Story of 'The Plain People'

by Anna Balmer Myers

When Phœbe Metz entered the church to keep her promise to sing at the service she found an eager crowd waiting for the opening. Every available space was occupied; people stood in the rear aisles, others waited in the churchyard by the open windows and hoped to catch there some stray parts of the service.

Phœbe pushed her way gently through the crowd at the door and stood in the aisle until an usher saw her and directed her to a seat near the organ. The pink in her cheeks grew deeper. "I'll sing my best for Greenwald and the Feast of Roses," she thought. "And for David! He's in the crowd. He said he's coming to hear me sing."

At the appointed hour the pipe-organ pealed out. The June sunlight streamed through the open windows, fell upon the banks of roses, and gleamed upon the fountain that played in the midst of the crimson flowers. Peace brooded over the place as the last strains of music died. There was silence for a moment, then a prayer, a hymn of adoration, and then the chosen speaker stood before the crowd and delivered his message.

Phœbe listened to him until he uttered the words, "True life must be service, true love must be giving. No man has reached true greatness save he serves, and he who serves most faithfully is greatest in the kingdom."

After those words she fell to thinking. Many things that had been dark to her suddenly became light. She seemed to see Royal Lee fiddling while the world was in travail, but beside him rose a vision of David in sailor's blue, ready to do his whole duty for his country.

"Oh," she thought, "I've been blind, but now I see! It's David I want. He's a man!"

She heard as in a dream the words of the one who presented the red rose to the heir. "Once more the time has come to pay our debt of one red rose. It is with cheerfulness and reverence we pay our rental. Amid these bright surroundings, in the presence of the many who have come to witness this unique ceremony, do we give to you in partial payment of the debt we owe—one red rose."

The heir received the flower and expressed her appreciation. Then silence settled upon the place and Phœbe rose to sing.

As the organ sent forth the opening strains of music the people in the church looked at each other, surprised, disappointed. Why, that was the old tune, "Jesus, Lover of my soul." The tune they had heard sung hundreds of times—was Phœbe going to sing that? With so many impressive selections to choose from no soloist need sing that old hymn! Some of the town people thought disdainfully, "Was that all she could sing after a whole winter's study in Philadelphia!"

But Phœbe sang the old words to the old tune. She sang them with a new power and sweetness. It touched the listeners in that rose-scented church and revealed to them the meaning of the old hymn. The dependence upon a divine guide, the utter impotence of mortal strength, breathed so persuasively in the second verse that many who heard Phœbe sing it mentally repeated the words with her.