fessional life led him to Berkshire Medical College, where he graduated in 1847. In after years his natural love of musical studies induced him to give his time to compiling and publishing religious tunes, with hymns more especially for Sundayschools.

He became a composer and wrote the melody to Atchison's words in 1877, which was arranged by a blind musician of Washington, D. C., J.W. Bischoff by name, with whom he had formed a partnership. The solo is long-would better, perhaps, have been four-line instead of eight-but well sung, it is a flight of melody that holds an assembly, and touches hearts.

Dr. Presbry's best known book was Gospel Bells (1883), the joint production of himself, Bischoff, and Rev. J. E. Rankin. He died Aug. 20, 1901.

"COME"

One of the most characteristic (both words and music) of the Gospel Hymns" Mrs. James Gibson Johnson" is the name attached to it as its author, though we have been unable to trace and verify her claim.

O, word of words the sweetest,

O, words in which there lie
All promise, all fulfillment,
And end of mystery;
Lamenting or rejoicing,
With doubt or terror nigh,

I hear the "Come" of Jesus,
And to His cross I fly.

CHORUS.

Come, come

Weary, heavy-laden, come, O come to me.

THE TUNE,

Composed by James McGranahan, delivers the whole stanza in soprano or tenor solo, when the alto, joining the treble, leads off the refrain in duet, the male voices striking alternate notes until the full harmony in the last three bars. The style and movement of the chorus are somewhat suggestive of a popular glee, but the music of the duet is flexible and sweet, and the bass and tenor progress with it not in the ride-and-tie-fashion but marking time wtih the title-syllable.

The contrast between the spiritual and the intellectual effect of the hymn and its wakeful tune is illustrated by a case in Baltimore. While Moody and Sankey were doing their gospel work in that city, a man, who, it seems, had brought a copy of the Gospel Hymns, walked out of one of the meetings after hearing this hymn-tune, and on reaching home, tore out the leaves that contained the song and threw them into the fire, saying he had "never heard such twaddle" in all his life.

The sequel showed that he had been too hasty. The hymn would not leave him. After hearing it night and day in his mind till he began to realize

what it meant, he went to Mr. Moody and told him
he was
"a vile sinner" and wanted to know how he
could "come" to Christ. The divine invitation
was explained, and the convicted man underwent
a vital change. His converted opinion of the hymn
was quite as remarkably different. He declared it
was "the sweetest one in the book." (Story of the
Gospel Hymns.)

"ALMOST PERSUADED."

The Rev. Mr. Brundage tells the origin of this hymn. In a sermon preached by him many years ago, the closing words were:

"He who is almost persuaded is almost saved, but to be almost saved is to be entirely lost." Mr. Bliss, being in the audience, was impressed with the thought, and immediately set about the composition of what proved one of his most popular songs, deriving his inspiration from the sermon of his friend, Mr. Brundage. Memoir of Bliss.

Almost persuaded now to believe,

Almost persuaded Christ to receive;
Seems now some soul to say

"Go Spirit, go thy way,

Some more convenient day

On Thee I'll call."

Almost persuaded-the harvest is past!

Both hymn and tune are by Mr. Bliss-and the omission of a chorus is in proper taste. This re

vival piece brings the eloquence of sense and sound to bear upon the conscience in one monitory pleading. Incidents in this country and in England related in Mr. Sankey's book, illustrate its power. It has a convicting and converting history.

"MY AIN COUNTREE."

This hymn was written by Miss Mary Augusta Lee one Sabbath day in 1860 at Bowmount, Croton Falls, N. Y., and first published in the New York Observer, Dec. 1861. The authoress had been reading the story of John Macduff who, with his wife, left Scotland for the United States, and accumulated property by toil and thrift in the great West. In her leisure after the necessity for hard work was past, the Scotch woman grew homesick and pined for her "ain countree. Her husband, at her request, came east and settled with her in sight of the Atlantic where she could see the waters that washed the Scotland shore. But she still pined, and finally to save her life, John Macdruff took her back to the heather hills of the mother-land, where she soon recovered her health and spirits.

I am far from my hame an' I'm weary aften whiles

For the langed-for hame-bringing an' my Father's welcome smiles.

I'll ne'er be fu' content until mine eyes do see

The shinin' gates o' heaven an' mine ain countree.

The airt' is flecked wi' flowers mony-tinted, frish anʼ gay,
The birdies warble blithely, for my Father made them sae,

But these sights an' these soun's will naething be to me
When I hear the angels singin' in my ain countree.

Miss Lee was born in Croton Falls in 1838, and was of Scotch descent, and cared for by her grandfather and a Scotch nurse, her mother dying in her infancy. In 1870 she became the wife of a Mr. Demarest, and her married life was spent in Passaic, N. J., until their removal to Pasadena, Cal., in hope of restoring her failing health. She died at Los Angeles, Jan. 8, 1888.

THE TUNE

Is an air written in 1864 in the Scottish style by Mrs. Ione T. Hanna, wife of a banker in Denver, Colo., and harmonized for choral use by Hubert P Main in 1873. Its plaintive sweetness suits the words which probably inspired it. The tone and metre of the hymn were natural to the young author's inheritance; a memory of her grandfather's home-land melodies, with which he once crooned "little Mary" to sleep.

Sung as a closing hymn, "My ain countree sends the worshipper away with a tender, unworldly thought that lingers.

Mrs. Demarest wrote an additional stanza in 1881 at the request of Mr. Main.

Some really good gospel hymns and tunes among those omitted in this chapter will cry out against the choice that passed them by. Others are of the more ephemeral sort, the phenomena