between the contending lines of traffic and pe
destrians which flowed by them.
Having reached an intersection this side of
the second principal thoroughfare—really just an
alley between two tall structures—now quite bare
of life of any kind, the man put down the organ,
which the woman immediately opened, setting
up a music rack upon which she placed a wide,
flat hymn book. Then handing the bible to the
man, she fell back in line with him, while the
twelveyearold boy put down a small camp
stool in front of the organ. The man—the father,
as he chanced to be—looked about him with
seeming wideeyed assurance, and announced,
without appearing to care whether he had any
auditors or not, “We will first sing a hymn of
None but a mule denies his family.
—Moroccan proverb
praise, so that any who may wish to acknowledge
the lord may join us. Will you oblige, Hester?”
at this the eldest girl, who until now had at
tempted to appear as unconscious and unaffected
as possible, bestowed her rather slim and as yet
undeveloped figure upon the camp chair and
turned the leaves of the hymn book, pumping the
organ while her mother observed, “i should think
it might be nice to sing twentyseven tonight—
‘How sweet for balm of Jesus’ love.”’
by this time various homewardbound
individuals of diverse grades and walks of life,
noticing the small group disposing itself in this
fashion, hesitated for a moment to eye them
askance or paused to ascertain the character
of their work. This hesitancy, construed by the
man apparently to constitute attention, how
ever mobile, was seized upon by him, and he
began addressing them as though they were
specifically here to hear him.
“let us all sing twentyseven, then—‘How
sweet the balm of Jesus’ love.’”
mother, together with the rather dubious bari
tone of the father. The other children piped
weakly along, the boy and girl having taken
hymn books from the small pile stacked upon
the organ. as they sang, this nondescript and
indifferent street audience gazed, held by the
peculiarity of such an unimportantlooking
family publicly raising its collective voice
against the vast skepticism and apathy of life.
some were interested or moved sympatheti
cally by the rather tame and inadequate figure
of the girl at the organ, others by the imprac
tical and materially inefficient texture of the
father, whose weak blue eyes and rather flabby
but poorly clothed figure bespoke more of
failure than anything else. of the group the
mother alone stood out as having that force
and determination which, however blind
or erroneous, makes for selfpreservation, if
not success in life. she, more than any of the
others, stood up with an ignorant, yet some
how respectable, air of conviction. if you had
watched her, her hymn book dropped to her
side; her glance directed straight before her
into space, you would have said, “Well, here is
one who, whatever her defects, probably does
what she believes as nearly as possible.” a
kind of hard, fighting faith in the wisdom and
mercy of that definite overruling and watch
ful power which she proclaimed, was written
in her every feature and gesture. “The love of
Jesus saves me whole,/The love of god my
steps control,” she sang resonantly, if slightly
nasally, between the towering walls of the ad
jacent buildings.
