“I will tell the story of ‘Hannah, Who Sang Countre,’” he said, “when the Club meets again, and I will sing some of the old New England tunes while telling the story.” Mr. Marlowe carried into effect the thought. The story was as follows:— HANNAH, WHO SANG COUNTRE. A THANKSGIVING STORY. I can see her now in my mind’s eye, as she used to sit alone on the church steps, her white face beaming with benevolence beneath her gray poke bonnet. The great bell hung over the steps, high in air. It was silent then, or rung only by the sharp gusts of winds. Before her was the old Puritan graveyard, in which slept all to whom she could claim kin. Hannah Semple was a poor, lone woman. Her home was among the lilac-bushes and apple-trees, but all that was mortal of those dear to her was here under the gray stones. She loved to visit them at early evenings. Her Sundays were always spent with them. Hannah Semple’s heart had been true to her own family while they were living; it was true still, and would always be the same. I can, in memory, hear her sing, and her cracked voice was tender and pitiful. Her favorite hymn began with a curious simile that excited my curiosity before I knew its history, and my imagination, afterwards: “As on some lonely building’s top The sparrow tells her moan, Far from the tents of joy and hope, I sit and grieve alone.” The tune was “Hallowell,” a great favorite in the olden time. It was one of those tunes in which, to my boyish ears, the singers of the different parts chased each other about in a most harmonious and wonderful way, and finally came out together at the end. The country choirs who could perform such tunes to the accompaniment of bass viols, were thought by the country people to have made great progress in musical art. It was in the days of these majestic performances in the choir-loft of the progressive Puritan church, that Hannah Semple used to sing _countre_. The church was closed now, and had been closed for two years: as silent as the graveyard in which the hardy Puritans slept under the mosses and zigzag stones. There was a progressive spirit in the old Swansea neighborhood, which was one of the successive communities that ran from Plymouth to the old towns founded by Roger Williams and the Quaker-Baptists on the Narragansett Bay. This was shown by the introduction of the bass viol into the choir, which soon found an evolution in two bass viols; then in fugued tunes by Billings and Holden and Maxim; then more bass viols, which were played on Thanksgiving Day.