Through the wintry Sabbath gloaming drifting shreds of music float,
And the quiet and the firelight and the sweetly solemn tunes
Bear me, dreaming, back to boyhood and its Sunday afternoons:

When we gathered in the parlor, in the parlor stiff and grand,
Where the haircloth chairs and sofas stood arrayed, a gloomy band,
Where each queer oil portrait watched us with a countenance of wood,
And the shells upon the what-not in a dustless splendor stood.

Then the quaint old parlor organ with the quaver in its tongue,
Seemed to tremble in its fervor as the sacred songs were sung,
As we sang the homely anthems, sang the glad revival hymns
Of the glory of the story and the light no sorrow dims.

While the dusk grew ever deeper and the evening settled down,
And the lamp-lit windows twinkled in the drowsy little town,
Old and young we sang the chorus and the echoes told it o'er
In the dear familiar voices, hushed or scattered evermore.

From the window of the chapel faint and low the music dies,
And the picture in the firelight fades before my tear-dimmed eyes,
But my wistful fancy, listening, hears the night-wind hum the tunes
That we sang there in the parlor on those Sunday afternoons.

* * * * *

[Illustration]

THE OLD DAGUERREOTYPES