The steamer landed at Quebec, and when the trains, filled with the new arrivals, rolled away, the song was swelling from nearly every car,—
When He cometh, when He cometh,
To make up His jewels.
The composer of the tune—with all the patriotic and sacred master-pieces standing to his credit—never reaped a richer triumph than he shared with his poet-partner that day, when “Precious Jewels” came back to them from over the sea. More than this, there was missionary joy for them both that their tuneful work had done something to hallow the homes of alien settlers with an American Christian psalm.
[George Frederick Root], Doctor of Music, was born in Sheffield, Mass., 1820, eldest of a family of eight children, and spent his youth on a farm. His genius for music drew him to Boston, where he became a pupil of Lowell Mason, and soon advanced so far as to teach music himself and lead the choir in Park St. church. Afterwards he went to New York as director of music in Dr. Deems's Church of the 367 / 317 Strangers. In 1852, after a year's absence and study in Europe, he returned to New York, and founded the Normal Musical Institute. In 1860, he removed to Chicago where he spent the remainder of his life writing and publishing music. He died Aug. 6, 1895, in Maine.
In the truly popular sense Dr. Root was the best-known American composer; not excepting Stephen C. Foster. Root's “Hazel Dell,” “There's Music in the Air,” and “Rosalie the Prairie Flower” were universal tunes—(words by Fanny Crosby,)—as also his music to Henry Washburn's “Vacant Chair.” The songs in his cantata, “The Haymakers,” were sung in the shops and factories everywhere, and his war-time music, in such melodies as “Shouting the Battle-cry of Freedom” and “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching” took the country by storm.
“SCATTER SEEDS OF KINDNESS.”
This amiable and tuneful poem, suggested by Rom. 12:10, is from the pen of Mary Louise Riley (Mrs. Albert Smith) of New York City. She was born in Brighton, Monroe Co., N.Y. May 27, 1843.
Let us gather up the sunbeams
Lying all along our path;