While you stand on the mountain tops, rejoicing free and strong!”
Joe Hale was setting close at hand, right in the foremost row,
And on his knees his little child, ’bout two year old or so:
Joe was a poor, lone widower, his wife was dead and gone,
His home was near the school-house, and I ’spose he felt forlorn,
So he’d come and brought the baby, though the reason why I knew—
His hired girl had slipped away to hear the lecture too.
And jest that very minute, when the room was still as death,
And you might have heerd a pin drop as Miss Harper stopped for breath,
That little toddling thing slid from off her father’s knee,