Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters by Unknown
page 90 of 357 (25%)
page 90 of 357 (25%)
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Hold me up in mighty waters,
Keep my eyes on things above, Righteousness, divine Atonement, Peace, and everlasting Love. It was a little lame schoolmaster, Tyrtaeus, who aroused the Spartans by his poetry and led them to victory against the foe. It was the musicians of the band of the Titanic--poor men, paid a few dollars a week--who played the music to keep up the courage of the souls aboard the sinking ship. "The way the band kept playing was a noble thing," says the wireless operator. "I heard it first while we were working the wireless, when there was a rag-time tune for us, and the last I saw of the band, when I was floating, struggling in the icy water, it was still on deck, playing `Autumn.' How those brave fellows ever did it I cannot imagine." Perhaps that music, made in the face of death, would not have satisfied the exacting critical sense. It may be that the chilled fingers faltered on the pistons of the cornet or at the valves of the French horn, that the time was irregular and that by an organ in a church, with a decorous congregation, the hymns they chose would have been better played and sung. But surely that music went up to God from the souls of drowning men, and was not less acceptable than the song of songs no mortal ear may hear, the harps of the seraphs |
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