Sometimes of a Sunday evening an aunt and uncle would ask for more lively songs than those I chose, for there was a long period when I steadfastly refused to sing secular songs on the Sabbath. At their request, I would evade and substitute; but if their insistence became too pronounced to be set aside, I would refuse point blank. In my unregenerate days there had been a time when I had sung “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” “Nancy Lee,” “Putting on the Style,” “Father, Come Down with the Stamps,” and such worldly things, but later the little Puritan was shocked to be asked to desecrate the Sabbath with such levity. They learned to cater to my strait-laced notions. I am afraid I was a not very pleasant person to deal with when a question of what I considered the fitness of things was involved. (Perhaps I am not even now.) I strongly suspect I was a self-righteous little prig for several years. At a later period one of the schoolboys described me to a newcomer in the town as “a nice girl, only _such_ a prim little Methodist.” Not many weeks later, that girl and I were laughing in great glee over the description which, though it had once been true, was then hardly applicable; but I was still living on the reputation of a past phase of religious emotion. We had a song called “Fire Bells Are Ringing,” a dramatic account of a fire on a wild winter night, the chorus ringing out with repeated cries of “Fire!” One windy night in February as Sister and I were at the organ singing this with all the dramatic power we could summon, the wild night putting us in the mood, Father, who had been in the kitchen popping corn, came running in shouting “Fire!” even louder than we were. Smiling, we sang on with redoubled energy, pleased that we had put him in the spirit of acting, too. He rushed around the room frantically shouting, “Fire! I tell you! Girls! _do you hear?_” Louder and more dramatic grew our efforts, and louder grew his cries until, a still more desperate tone in his voice, and the words, “Girls! Get me my coat, quick!” finally made us understand he was in earnest. Mother, too, had thought him fooling and there he was, excited as he always got at the alarm of fire, almost in despair of making any of us take him seriously! It was a house on the street above. A fierce conflagration was under way. With the high wind, the adjoining house of a neighbour was endangered, and we had an exciting time helping our friends gather together valuables and other belongings, though luckily the fire did not spread. Ah! the cruel, relentless sight of that burning home! What if it was “the meanest man in town” whose house was burning down--everyone pitied him that wild night when they saw the pitiless flames.