This is certainly pretty bad poetry,--bad enough to be worthy a place in "The Bay Psalm Book,"--but is also a most noble, laudable, and necessary aspiration; for power of Grace was plainly needed to enable Abednego or any one else to sing from those pages; and our pious New England forefathers must have been under special covenant of grace when they persevered against such obstacles and under such overwhelming disadvantages in having singing in their meetings. Another copy of the old New England Psalm-Book was thus inscribed:-- "Elam Noyes His Book You children of the name of Noyes Make Jesus Christ your only choyse." The early members of the Noyes family all seemed to be exceedingly and properly proud of this rhyming couplet; it formed a sort of patent of nobility. They wrote the pious injunction to their descendants in their Psalm-Books and their Bibles, in their wills, their letters; and they, with the greatest unanimity of feeling, had it cut upon their several tombstones. It was their own family motto,--their totem, so to speak. In a New England Psalm-Book in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society there is written in the distinct handwriting of Isaiah Thomas these explanatory words:-- "This was the Pocket Psalm-book of John Symmons who died at Salem at 100 years. He was born at North Salem went a-fishing in his youth was a prisoner with the Indians in Nova Scotia afterwards followed his labours in a Shipyard and till great old age laboured upon his lands and died without pain Aet 100. 31 October, 1791. He was a worthy conscientious and well-informed man and agreeable until the last hour of his life." I can think of no pleasanter tribute to be given to the character of any one than the simple words, "He was agreeable until the last hour of his life." What share in the production and maintenance of that amiable and enviable condition of disposition may be attributed to the ever-present influence of the Pocket Psalm-Book cannot be known; but the constant study of the holy though clumsy verses may have largely caused that sweet agreeability which so characterized John Symmons.