A Hindoo air or natural chanson, that may have been hummed in a pagan temple in the hearing of Mr. Young, was the basis of the little melody since made familiar to millions of prattling tongues. Such running tone-rhythms create themselves in the instinct of the ruder nations and tribes, and even the South African savages have their incantations with the provincial "clicks" that mark the singers' time. With an ear for native chirrups and trills, the author of our pretty infant-school song succeeded in capturing one, and making a Christian tune of it. The musician, Samuel Sebastian Wesley, sometime in the eighteen-forties, tried to substitute another melody for the lines, but "There is a happy land" needs its own birth-music. "I HAVE A FATHER IN THE PROMISED LAND." Another cazonet for the infant class. Instead of a hymn, however, it is only a refrain, and--like the ring-chant of the "Hebrew Children," and even more simple--owes its only variety to the change of one word. The third and fourth lines,-- My father calls me, I must go To meet Him in the Promised Land, --take their cue from the first, which may sing,-- I have a Saviour---- I have a mother---- I have a brother---- --and so on ad libitum. But the little ones love every sound and syllable of the lisping song, for it is plain and pleasing, and when a pinafore school grows restless nothing will sooner charm them into quiet than to chime its innocent unison. Both words and tune are nameless and storyless. "I THINK WHEN I READ THAT SWEET STORY" While riding in a stage-coach, after a visit to a mission school for poor children, this hymn came to the mind of Mrs. Jemima Thompson Luke, of Islington, England. It speaks its own purpose plainly enough, to awaken religious feeling in young hearts, and guide and sanctify the natural childlike interest in the sweetest incident of the Saviour's life. I think when I read that sweet story of old When Jesus was here among men, How He called little children as lambs to His fold, I should like to have been with them then. I wish that His hands had been laid on my head, And I had been placed on His knee, And that I might have seen His kind look when He said, "Let the little ones come unto me." This is not poetry, but it phrases a wish in a child's own way, to be melodized and fixed in a child's reverent and sensitive memory. Mrs. Luke was born at Colebrook Terrace, near London, Aug. 19, 1813. She was an accomplished and benevolent lady who did much for the education and welfare of the poor. Her hymn--of five stanzas--was first sung in a village school at Poundford Park, and was not published until 1841. _THE TUNE._