Frank M. Davis was born on a farm near Marcellus, New York, the youngest of a family of ten children. He began composing tunes at an early age and became a teacher of vocal and instrumental music. He travelled extensively through the eastern and southern states, directing chorus choirs and teaching vocal classes. He compiled several Sunday school collections, among them _New Pearls of Song_, 1877, and _Notes of Praise_, of which more than 100,000 copies were sold. Davis is the author of over 100 vocal and instrumental compositions. He died suddenly of heart failure at Chesterfield, Indiana, where he was attending a camp meeting. 503. My days are gliding swiftly by _David Nelson_, 1793-1844 A hymn written by a preacher while hiding from pursuing slave-holders whose anger and violence were aroused by Nelson’s aggressive anti-slavery views. David Nelson, a surgeon in the U. S. Army during the war of 1812, left his profession to become a minister, meanwhile owning and operating a plantation in Missouri. After listening to an address on slavery, he declared himself in favor of freeing the slaves and advocated the plan of colonizing them in Africa. This so enraged some of the slave-holders that they drove Nelson from his home. To avoid mob violence, he escaped, reaching, after three days and nights of wandering, the Mississippi River opposite Quincy, Illinois. Hiding there in the bushes, with his pursuers near but unable to find him, the river gliding swiftly before him, he wrote this hymn on the back of old letters he had in his pocket. He was finally rescued by members of the Quincy Congregational Church who, having learned of his plight, took him on a fishing canoe and rowed him across the river, still pursued, to safety and friends, on the hospitable shore of a free state. _MUSIC._ SHINING SHORE, one of the composer’s most popular tunes, has been given various arrangements for voice and instruments. Root has written concerning the origin of the tune: