"Here is a new tune I should like to have you look at—'Ortonville.' I have hummed it over, and it seems a very good one."
The teacher glanced over it, said they would try it, and very soon the school were singing—
"Majestic sweetness sits enthroned,"
as those words have been sung a thousand times to the sweet and simple notes of—
ORTONVILLE. C.M. Thomas Hastings, Mus. Doc.
Ma-jes-tic sweet-ness sits enthroned
Up-on the Sav-iour's brow:
His head with radiant glory crowned,
His lips with grace o'erflow,
His lips with grace o'erflow.
Such was my first acquaintance with this piece of sacred music. Little did I then think that it was an acquaintance I was to meet in such different and distant parts of the world, in so many and such varied circumstances, and that was to afford me such peculiar pleasure.
I need hardly say that "Ortonville" became at once a favorite with our school. The new scholars were most apt to strike upon it, if they happened to be in a mood for singing, as they were busy at their winter's tasks—foddering the cattle and other stock at the barn, watering the horses, carrying in the wood for the evening and morning fires in the ample old-fashioned fireplaces, or doing any little chores about the house.
The teacher was pretty sure to select it if the minister or influential members of the congregation came in to see how the school was getting along; as, somehow, they always seemed to be in better time and tune, and do more for the credit of the school, and the satisfaction of those who had raised the subscription, when they sang this, than in singing any other tune. Very soon it was sung everywhere, and those who could sing at all had learned it by rote, at least, as a necessity. The choir were not only better satisfied with themselves, but the minister seemed to preach with more animation, when "Ortonville" was sung upon the Sabbath, and prayer-meetings that were dull and uninteresting would take a new start when "Ortonville" was started. For not only all the new singers could sing, but all the old men and women who had been members of the choir when the country was first settled, and the hardy Puritan pioneers, in the absence of a minister, had what were called "deacon-meetings," the school-master, or whoever was regarded as the best reader in the settlement, reading a sermon.
It was not long before it was found out that we were not alone in our admiration of the new favorite. In the adjoining towns, wherever the singing-schools were using the "Manhattan Collection," they had fallen upon this tune and were singing it just as we were.