When Jesus was here among men
How He called little children as lambs to His fold,
I should like to have been with Him then."


Lucy would be rocking her baby and singing, "Hush, my dear, lie
still and slumber." Candace's favourite she made up about her
man who had been killed in the war, when they had been married
only six weeks, which hadn't given her time to grow tired of him
if he hadn't been "all her fancy painted." She arranged the
words like "Ben Battle was a soldier bold," and she sang them to
suit herself, and cried every single minute:

"They wrapped him in his uniform,
They laid him in the tomb,
My aching heart I thought 'twould break,
But such was my sad doom."


Candace just loved that song. She sang it all the time. Leon
said our pie always tasted salty from her tears, and he'd take a
bite and smile at her sweetly and say: "How UNIFORM you get your
pie, Candace!"

May's favourite was "Joy Bells." Father would be whispering over
to himself the speech he was preparing to make at the next
prayer-meeting. We never could learn his speeches, because he
read and studied so much it kept his head so full, he made a new
one every time. You could hear Laddie's deep bass booming the
"Bedouin Love Song" for a mile; this minute it came rolling