Miss Lee was born in Croton Falls in 1838, and was of Scotch descent, and cared for by her grandfather and a Scotch nurse, her mother dying in her infancy. In 1870 she became the wife of a Mr. Demarest, and her married life was spent in Passaic, N.J., until their removal to Pasadena, Cal., in hope of restoring her failing health. She died at Los Angeles, Jan. 8, 1888.
THE TUNE
Is an air written in 1864 in the Scottish style by Mrs. Ione T. Hanna, wife of a banker in Denver, Colo., and harmonized for choral use by Hubert P. Main in 1873. Its plaintive sweetness suits the words which probably inspired it. The tone and metre of the hymn were natural to the young author's inheritance; a memory of her grandfather's home-land melodies, with which he once crooned “little Mary” to sleep.
Sung as a closing hymn, “My ain countree” sends the worshipper away with a tender, unworldly thought that lingers.
Mrs. Demarest wrote an additional stanza in 1881 at the request of Mr. Main.
Some really good gospel hymns and tunes among those omitted in this chapter will cry out against the choice that passed them by. Others are of the more ephemeral sort, the phenomena 517 / 457 (and the demand) of a generation. Carols of pious joy with inordinate repetition, choruses that surprise old lyrics with modern thrills, ballads of ringing sound and slender verse, are the spray of tuneful emotion that sparkles on every revival high-tide, but rarely leaves floodmarks that time will not erase. Religious songs of the demonstrative, not to say sensational, kind spring impromptu from the conditions of their time—and give place to others equally spontaneous when the next spiritual wave sweeps by. Their value lingers in the impulse their novelty gave to the life of sanctuary worship, and in the Christian characters their emotional power helped into being.