“Yes, the Lord comes regularly. _They_ are there. Those I love are always there, down under the moss. Do they listen? I think they do. The sun comes down on the steps, and the winds come from the meadows, and the birds come. The world is full of beautiful things that come to hear me preach to myself. Child, if you will come to hear me next Sunday mornin’, I will sing you one of the most beautiful songs that you ever heard, and will tell you about the Great Thanksgiving, just as I said. Now you will come—do.” The next Sabbath was not a meeting day with the family. The horses had been worked so hard in ploughing that Father decided that they must be allowed to rest. At the breakfast-table an allusion was made to old Hannah, and I startled the family with the question,— “May I go over there to-day, and see Hannah, and get some lilacs?” “Yes,” said my mother, whose heart was all sympathy. “You would be company for her. I never knew a woman who was so self-forgetful, or did so much for poor people and sick people, as she has done. She is not a prophetess, but I do think if the angels of heaven have a message for any one, it must be for her. Poor old Hannah!” “Perhaps she will tell you about her beau, Peter Rugg, who thought that a sheep was a catamount,” said one of the work-people, dryly. As I approached the silent meeting-house, I saw, through the opening in the locust-trees, Hannah, sitting on its sunny steps. She met me with a smile, exclaiming, “Come _in_; meetin’ hasn’t begun. I’m glad you’ve come. We will have the service, then I will prophesy as the Lord commands, and after that you shall go home with me for some cake to eat. You will live to see the Great Thanksgiving. It has been revealed to me.” She held a hymn book in her hand, and an old-time parallelogram of tunes, with slant sides, lay beside her. She took up the music book, opened it, and held it in one hand, and the hymn book in the other. “This tune that I am goin’ to sing has a mighty curious history,” said she. “It was written by Abraham Maxim, or Granville Maxim. He lived in Maine, and he named his tunes for the towns in Maine: ‘Portland,’ ‘Hallowell,’ ‘Bath,’ and the like. “He was disappointed in love, Maxim was. So was I. I’ll tell you about it when I get home, after meetin’. One day he went out into the woods to hang himself, carryin’ with him a rope. He sat down in a lonely place, near a shed, to meditate before he tied the rope to a tree. Well, as Providence would have it, a sparrer, whose nest had been disturbed, uttered its little plaintive cry of fear, because of its young. It touched his heart, and he wrote down on a piece of birch-bark the hymn I’m goin’ to sing. Then he wrote to the hymn a tune in deep minor, endin’ with a very solemn chord. It’s very comfortin’ to me.”