The comparative scarcity of polemical athletes and the relative plenty of the Miss Susie Goldrick kind of teachers, apparently called into being the Berean Lesson Leaf system, with its Bible cut up into lady-bites of ten or twelve verses, its Golden Topics, Golden Texts, its apt alliterations, like:
S AMUEL
EEKS
AUL
ORROWING
and its questions prepared in tabloid form, suitable for the most enfeebled digestions, see directions printed on inside wrapper. Among the many evidences of the degeneracy of the age is the scandalous ignorance of our young people regarding the sacred Scriptures, which at the very lowest estimate are incontestably the finest English ever written. Those whose childhood antedates the lesson leaf are not so unfamiliar with that wondrous treasure-house of thought. It is not for me to say what has wrought the change. I can only point out that lesson leaves, being about the right size for shaving papers, barely last from Sunday to Sunday, while that very identical Bible with the blinding type that I won years and years ago, by learning verses, is with me still. Yes, and as I often wonder to discover, some of those very verses that I gobbled down as heedlessly as any ostrich are with me still.
Remain to be considered the opening and closing exercises, principally devoted, I remember, to learning new tunes and singing old ones out of books with pretty titles, like “Golden Censer,” “Silver Spray,” “Pearl and Gold,” “Sparkling Dewdrops,” and “Sabbath Chimes.” I wasn't going to tell it, but I might as well, I suppose. I can remember as far back as “Musical Leaves.” There must be quite a lot of people scattered about the country who sung out of that when they were little. I wish a few of us old codgers might get together some time and with many a hummed and prefatory, “Do, mi, Sol, do; Sol, mi... mi-i-i-i,” finally manage to quaver out the sweet old tunes we learned when we were little tads, each with a penny in his fat, warm hand: “Shall we Gather at the River?” and “Work, for the Night is Coming”; and what was the name of that one about:
“The waves shall come and the rolling thunder shock
Shall beat upon the house that is founded on a rock,
And it never shall fall, never, never, never.”
What the proper English tune is to “I think when I read that sweet story of old” I cannot tell, but I am sure it can never melt my heart as that one in the old “Musical Leaves.” with its twistful repetitions of the last line:
“I should like to have been with Him then,
I should like to have been with Him then,
When He took little children like lambs to His fold,
I should like to have been with Him then.”
I fear we could not sing that without breaking down. As we recall it, we draw an inward fluttering breath, something grips our throats and makes them ache, our eyes blur, and a tear slips down upon the cheek, not of sorrow—God knows not all of sorrow—but if we had it all to live over again, how differently we—oh, well, it's too late now, but still.
Leafing over my little girl's “Arabian Nights” the other day, when I came to the story of “The Enchanted Horse,” I found myself humming, “Land ahead! Its fruits are waving.” My father used to lead the singing in Sabbath-school, and when he was sol-fa-ing that tune to learn it, I was devouring that story, and was just about at the picture where Prince What's-his-name rises up into the air on the Enchanted Horse, with his true love hanging on behind, and all the multitude below holding their turbans on as they look up and exclaim: “Well, if that don't beat the Dutch!”
And another tune still excites in me the sullen resentment that it did when I first heard it. In those days, just as a fellow got to the exciting part in “Frank at Don Carlos's Ranch,” or whatever the book was, there was kindling to be split, or an armful of wood to be brought in, or a pitcher of water from the well, or “run over to Mrs. Boggs's and ask her if she won't please lend me her fluting-iron,” or “run down to Galbraith's and get me a spool of white thread, Number 60, and hurry right back, because then I want you to go over to Serepta Downey's and take her that polonaise pattern she asked me to cut out for her,” or—there was always something on hand. So what should one of these composers do—I don't know what ever possessed the man—but go write a Sabbath-school song with this chorus: