“My father and mother can both sing.”
Mr Brownrigg was seated on the other side of me, and had apparently listened with some interest. His face was ten degrees less stupid than it usually was. I fancied I saw even a glimmer of some satisfaction in it. I turned to Old Rogers.
“Sing us a song, Old Rogers,” I said.
“I’m no canary at that, sir; and besides, my singing days be over. I advise you to ask Dr. Duncan there. He CAN sing.”
I rose and said to the assembly:
“My friends, if I did not think God was pleased to see us enjoying ourselves, I should have no heart for it myself. I am going to ask our dear friend Dr. Duncan to give us a song.—If you please, Dr. Duncan.”
“I am very nearly too old,” said the doctor; “but I will try.”
His voice was certainly a little feeble; but the song was not much the worse for it. And a more suitable one for all the company he could hardly have pitched upon.
“There is a plough that has no share,
But a coulter that parteth keen and fair.
But the furrows they rise
To a terrible size,
Or ever the plough hath touch’d them there.
’Gainst horses and plough in wrath they shake:
The horses are fierce; but the plough will break.
“And the seed that is dropt in those furrows of fear,
Will lift to the sun neither blade nor ear.
Down it drops plumb,
Where no spring times come;
And here there needeth no harrowing gear:
Wheat nor poppy nor any leaf
Will cover this naked ground of grief.
“But a harvest-day will come at last
When the watery winter all is past;
The waves so gray
Will be shorn away
By the angels’ sickles keen and fast;
And the buried harvest of the sea
Stored in the barns of eternity.”
Genuine applause followed the good doctor’s song. I turned to Miss Boulderstone, from whom I had borrowed a piano, and asked her to play a country dance for us. But first I said—not getting up on a chair this time:—