He was giving out a hymn.
"One sweetly solemn thought
Comes to me o'er and o'er:
I am nearer home to-day
Than I ever have been before."
The whole congregation joined in, those without the church as well as those who were within.
As I heard the deep bass of the old Drummer, rolling in a low, solemn undertone, a sudden shifting of the scene came to me. I was in a great auditorium filled with light, and packed with humanity rising tier on tier and stretching far back till lost in the maze of distances. A grand orchestra, banked before me, with swaying arms and earnest faces, played a wonderful harmony which rolled about me like the sea and whelmed me with its volume till I was almost swept away by the tide, then suddenly down under its sweep I found the low deep roll of the bass drum. No one appeared to mark it or paid any heed to him. Nor did the big Drummer pay any heed to the audience. All he minded was the harmony and his drum. But I knew that, unmarked and unheeded, it set athrob the pulsing air and stirred the billows through which all that divine music reached and held the soul.
As we walked home that night after pressing our way into the throng of poor people to wring John Marvel's hand, I said to my wife after a struggle with myself to say it:
"I think I was wrong about John, and you were right. He did right. He is well named the Assistant."
My wife said simply: "I feel that I owe him more than I can say." She slipped her hand in my arm, and a warm feeling for all mankind surged about my heart.
BOOKS BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE
ROBERT E. LEE: The Southerner