uman hearts as a
king. I wondered why the people did not sing "Hallelujah" more. It
seemed like a word sent straight down to us out of heaven.

I did not like to learn the sorrowful hymns, though I did it when they
were given to me as a task, such as--

"Hark, from the tombs," and

"Lord, what a wretched land is this,
That yields us no supply."

I suppose that these mournful strains had their place, but sometimes
the transition was too sudden, from the outside of the meeting-house to
the inside; from the sunshine and bobolinks and buttercups of the merry
May-day world, to the sad strains that chanted of "this barren land,"
this "vale of tears," this "wilderness" of distress and woe. It let us
light-hearted children too quickly down from the higher key of mirth to
which our careless thoughts were pitched. We knew that we were happy,
and sorrow to us was unreal. But somehow we did often get the
impression that it was our duty to try to be sorrowful; and that we
could not be entirely good, without being rather miserable.

And I am afraid that in my critical little mind I looked upon it as an
affectation on the part of the older people to speak of life in this
doleful way. I thought that they really knew better. It seemed to me
that it must be delightful to grow up, and learn things, and do things,
and be very good indeed,--better than children could possibly know how
to be. I knew afterwards that my elders were sometimes, at least,
sincere in their sadness; for with many of them life must have been a
hard struggle. But when they shook their heads and said,--"Child, you
will not be so happy by and by; you are seeing your best days now," I
still doubted. I was born with the blessing of a cheerful temperament;
and while that is not enough to sustain any of us through the
inevitable sorrows that all must share, it would have been most
unnatural and ungrateful in me to think of earth as a dismal place,
when everything without and within was trying to tell me that this good
and beautiful world belongs to God.

I took exception to some verses in many of the hymns that I loved the
most. I had my own mental reservations with regard even to that
glorious chant of the ages,--

"Jerusalem, my happy home,
Name ever dear to me."

I always wanted to skip one half of the third stanza, as it stood in
our Hymn-Book:

"Where congregations ne'er break up,
And Sabbaths have no end."

I did not want it to be Sabbath