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An interesting story of how Dudley Buck was
seized by the divine power of a hymn, and produced
fitting music for its one and only performance, is
told in The Westminster. The relator of the inci
dent is the Rev. George B. Spalding, who was a pas
tor in Hartford, Conn., in the early days of Dud'ey
Buck’s career there as an organist. In Dr. Spald
ing’s church was “a most notable group of singing
men and singing women,” and “he was their master,
their very soul, and ours also.” The writer calls this
“an instance of his surpassing genius,” and writes:
“From my study window J heard the organ as Buck
was practicing in the church just across the street.
I went in for the purpose of getting his choice of mu
sic for a hymn which I wished sung on the next day,
at which there was to be the sacramental service.
The hymn was set to no tune in the book. It had
stirred me greatly as I came upon it in my prepara
tion for the Sunday. 1 handed it to the organist;
I watched his face as he read it over. Its tremen
dous dramatic power seized and held him from the
beginning to the close. He had never before met
with it. Not many of your readers have ever seen
it. It runs thus:
Darkly rose the guilty morning,
When, the King of glory scorning,
Raged the fierce Jerusalem;
See the Christ, His cross uplifting,
TOR LOVE OT COUNTRY:
EVERAL boys sat talking before their
tent. They were not yet used to camp
life, for only a few days before had
they volunteered for service, and had
but yesterday reached the city where
the state troops were being mobilized.
There was much dissatisfaction among
them, for they were yet in need of
many comforts—even of necessities.
S
“I wish,” said one of them, a very young boy with
a smooth, girlish face, ‘‘that I had not come, and I
h T pe, when the examination comes off, they’ll ‘turn
me down.’ This isn't what I thought it would be.”
‘‘Ha, ha!” laughed an older boy. ‘‘l knew you’d
soon be crying for your mother, but didn’t expect
it to be so soon. Just hear, boys!”
‘‘Well,” said a third, “you’ll be surprised to hear
it from me, I know, but I almost wish I had stayed
away. I thought they wanted us to fight, and now
they say we may have to wait here for several
months, or that we may not be needed at all. I, for
one, want to fight, and fight soon —the sooner the
better.”
“J might have known you would fee] so,” said the
second boy who had spoken, slapping him on the
shoulder. “You are always so eager and earnest,
that it is impossible for you to be content when
idle. But how is it with you, Howard?” he contin
ued, turning to a young man who had been silent
while talked. “Are you, too, sorry that you
came? ’
“Indeed I am not!” Howard exclaimed. “Is there
not something glorious in the thought that we are
here in response to the call of our country? Then
why should we complain of a few weeks —even of a
few months—of waiting, when it. will better fit us for
service in the field?”
“But,” said the one who had expressed a desire
to fight, and to fight eary. “suppose we should not
be called to the front at all?”
“Ah,” said Howard, proudly, “we shall be! I have
heard our company is one of those to be sent to
Chicamauga, soon to go from there to Cuba, and I
shall be among them —never fear! Do not think it
idle boasting with me, boys; I feel (I have always
felt) I was born to be a soldier. My mother was the
most patriotic woman I ever knew, and was proud
of the fact that her ancestry—as far back as it could
be traced—had won distinction in war. Inheriting
that warrior spirit, and having such training as she
gave me, how could I fail to be a soldier? I would
A HLOLN THAT SUNG IT SELT
The Golden Age for September 29, 1910.
See Him stricken, spit on, wearing
The thorn-plaited diadem.
Not the crowd whose cries assailed Him,
Nor the hands that rudely nailed Him,
S ew Him on the cursed tree;
Ours the sins from heaven that called Him,
Ours the sin whose burden galled Him
In the sad Gethsemane.
For our sins, of glory emptied,
He was fasting, lone, and tempted,
He was slain on Calvary;
Yet He for His murderers pleaded;
Lord, by us that prayer is needed,
We have pierced, yet trust in Thee.
In our wealth and tribulation,
By thy precious cross and passion,
By thy blood and agony,
By thy glorious resurrection,
By thy Holy Ghost's protection,
Make us Thine eternally.
“As Buck read on, his face gathered into a very
agony. The tears rained down upon the book. Nei
ther of us spoke for a time. ‘There is no tune,’ I
said, ‘for such a hymn.’ ‘No,’ he replied, ‘but I will
have one.’ ‘And the choir?’ I asked. ‘They will be
all ready,’ he answered.
bear any hardship; would gladly give life itself, for
the sake of my country. As for going back now, I
could not; I would rather—ah!”
He raised himself suddenly from the reclining
posture he had assumed —his usually handsome face
distorted with pain.
“What is it?” asked one of the boys, springing
quickly to his side.
“Oh, nothing!” he answered, almost in a tone of
annoyance.
Then added, in his usual kindly tone: “It has
passed now,” and rising, strode away, nor asked
them to accompany him in his stroll.
The boys watched him disappear behind a row of
tents, then one said: “Something is wrong with
Howard. This is not the first time I have seen him
start, as with sharp and sudden pain. Yesterday
afternoon, while we were drilling, it seemed to me
once he would have to give up, in spite of his strong
will.”
Just then they were interrupted, and detailed to
go with a squad of twenty who were next to be
examined as to their physical abi’ity to enter the
service of the United States.
“Howard should not have left us,” one of them
said. “He will be late.”
But even as he spoke, the young man came up,
and in silence took his place. Marching to the ex
aminer’s tent, they stood, one behind the other, each
awaiting his turn. When Howard was called, he
walked with quick, firm tread, his head held proudly
up, into the presence of tne board. There was some
thing so manly, so soldierly, in his appearance, that
immediately he won the admiration of the* officers
present. The examination was begun, and proceeded
favorably for some moments, when the physician
made a discovery that, caused him to look grave.
“Do you have sometimes,” he asked, “a feeling of
extreme oppression?”
“Occasional’y,” the young man answered, indif
ferently, as if it were a matter of small moment.
“And again, when you draw a deep breath, or when
anything happens to excite you, is there a sudden,
sharp pain about the heart?”
“Yes,” responded Howard, still speaking care
lessly, though a look of alarm overspread his face.
“But what of that? It is nothing—a mere nothing—
and soon passes.”
“Yes, I know,” said the physician. He spoke very
gently, for something about the boy appealed to him
strongly. “But you have a malady of the heart,
“The Sunday morning came. The holy sacrament
was observed. Then I read the hymn slowly to the
congregation. The first breath of the great organ
under its master’s touch was like the prelude of an
awful tragedy, and as the choir caught the hymn in
spired by the full meaning of every word, the whole
scene of the fierce Jerusalem, and the sad Gethse
mane, and the cruel Calvary burst upon the great
congregation, filling them with very terror. The or
gan itself seemed affrighted. And then, with the clos
ing stanza, organ and choir surged into one wailing
cry of penitence and beseeching, as the sobbing,
pleading voice of the soprano soared upward and still
upward, breaking at last as against the very throne
of God. If ever pastor and people worshipped, if ever
human souls confessed and prayed and won forgive
ness, it. was then and there. We were transported
and transfigured under The power of music which is
sovereign when out of its soul it pours itself into the
souls of hearers.
“Then it is that music is neither science nor art,
but a spirit which is the breath of the Almighty.
Then it is that heaven moves down into the souls of
men and eternity begins.
“I asked Buck, as others did, for the composition
of that music. He promised it, and he tried hard to
reproduce it, but he never could do it. It was born
of God. It was the Spirit of God, and, like the wind,
we hear the voice thereof, but know not whence it
cometh nor whither it goeth.’ ’’—Exchange.
MARGARET X RICHARD
which, though not serious, forbids your entering the
army.”
“I am sorry,” he had said, and he was, in truth.
The boy who had borne, unknown to others, what
he knew it was this boy’s lot to suffer; who was
willing to bear the added suffering brought on by
the exposure and excitement incident to soldier life,
was made of the stuff that heroes are.
Howard’s face turned pale. Tne thought that he
would be rejected had not occurred to him, and was
a most unbearable.
“I did not pass, you say?” he asked, speaking with
difficulty, for the tent seemed close —so close he
could scarcely breathe. His heart seemed to flutter
and quiver, like a bird imprisoned in one’s hand.
Suddenly, overcome by a great throb of pain, he
sank, unconscious, to the ground.
The physician knelt quickly beside him, but shook
his bead, and said, softly: “A hero is dead.”
i? a?
REJECTED, BUT NOT LOST.
The old wire-covered door stood idly against the
wall of a house. It had been the door of a chicken
yard, but its usefulness was over. Its wood was
brown and warped by the weather, its hinges rusted
and broken, and it had been put.by as good for noth
ing. But the honeysuckle found it, and crept silently
up and up, spreading its green fingers lovingly over
rusted wire and rough framework, until finally the
whole door was hidden in a lace-work of green; then
the blossoms began to appear, bursting into white
and gold sweetness, until the old door was a mass
of beauty. They found it on the day before Chil
dren’s day, and stood in wonder over it, and with
sudden inspiration cut off the vine at the roots and
caiiied the old door into the church, where it leaned
its glorified height against the pulpit wall next to
the choir. No one looking upon that mass of lovely
green and white leaves and blossoms would have
dreamed the foundation was an old chicken-house
door. It was glorified and made fit for the house of
the Lord. That is the way Christ may come to our
lives, and glorify them and beautify them, even in
all their ugliness and uselessness. It was not the
glory of the wooden frame or the chicken wire, even
had they been new and fresh, that shone in the
church that day, but the glory of the life that had
come to dwell upon it, and twine about it, and inter
lace every portion of it, and blossom in light upon
it. 1 hat is what Jesus will be to you and me. —The
Evening Star.
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