He played his own accompaniment,
his fingers, stiffened though they were with hard work,
ran lightly over the keys. Every person sat still to
listen. Even Martha Perkins forgot to twirl her fingers
and leaned forward. It was a simple little English ballad
he sang:
Where'er I wander over land or foam,
There is a place so dear the heart calls home.
Perhaps it was because the ocean rolled between him and
his home that he sang with such a wistful longing in his
voice, that even his dullest listener felt the heart-cry
in it. It was a song of one who reaches longing arms
across the sea to the old home and the old friends, whom
he sees only in his dreams.
In the silence that followed the song, his fingers
unconsciously began to play Mendelssohn's beautiful air,
"We Would See Jesus, for the Shadows Lengthen." Closely
linked with the young man's love of home was his religious
devotion. The quiet Sabbath morning with its silvery
chimes calling men to prayer; the soft footfalls in the
aisle; the white-robed choir, his father's voice in the
church service, so full of divine significance; the
many-voiced responses and the swelling notes of the "Te
Deum"--he missed it so. All the longing for the life he
had left, all the spiritual hunger and thirst that was
in his heart sobbed in his voice as he sang:
We would see Jesus,
For the shadows lengthen
O'er this little landscape of our life.
We would see Jesus,
Our weak faith to strengthen,
For the last weariness, the final strife.
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