“Yes, when one has three generations of Methody (Methodist) ministers behind one, the pulpit streak is bound to show. It’s very funny to hear folk wondering where I got it.” Then Miss Macdonald made this observation: “It is not generally known, perhaps, that he (Kipling) was a grandson of the manse on both sides, his maternal grandfather being the Rev. George B. Macdonald, and his paternal grandfather being the Rev. Joseph Kipling, both Wesleyan ministers.” This side-light on Kipling’s method of composition was also given by Miss Macdonald: “When composing verse he would set it to a tune, often a hymn tune, and I have heard him walking up and down the room singing a verse over and over again to get the lilt and the swing of it.” Kipling, by the way, was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1907. And when the author was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, June 23, 1936, the choir sang his own “Recessional,” and through the venerable temple there rang the words: “Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget!” CHAPTER XI THANKSGIVING IN SONG The note of praise was sounded at the very beginning of the 75th annual convention of the New York State Council of Religious Education, which was held in Utica, N. Y., October, 1930. The assembled delegates, whose interest centered in directing the religious life of the young people in the churches and communities of the state, lifted up their voices in singing what was once characterized by Dr. J. M. Buckley as the “most perfect hymn in thanksgiving in the English language:” “For the beauty of the earth, For the glory of the skies, For the love which from our birth Over and around us lies: Lord of all, to Thee we raise This our hymn of grateful praise.” Each day in downtown Los Angeles, in the morning, at noonday, and again at night, a mighty choir of bells invites the hearts of merchants and bankers, tradesmen and newsboys, policemen and seamstresses to pause and reflect, to be still a moment in their hearts and receive the sacred benediction of the bells. In the message of the bells there is joy and peace and love for all our fellow men, the love one sometimes forgets in the hurly-burly of a great city. Whenever I hear these bells I stop whatever I am doing, and my heart looks up to the great tower atop a lofty building and beyond to the vast blue sky. My heart sings with the bells a prayer of gratitude for the gentle reminder that commerce is not all. —_Cy Lance in “The Classmate.”_ Two Statesmen Sang “America” in Washington’s Pew