Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1888-12-21

church, the sexton had blown out the lights
and locked the heavy doors behind him.
Sleigh oells jingled family away out of hear
ing, and the slow footsteps of the sexton
crunching on the half trodden snow mingled
with the tones of the clock in the high tower
striking ten. Then a door inside the vestry
opened, and out of a closet where brooms
and dust pans were kept ali old man came
hestatingly. He made his way very slowly
up the broad stairs to the main meeting
room. At the door leading to the choir loft
he paused moment. His hand was on the
knob, but he turned it not. More slowly than
before he went down the aisle and dropped
into pew. He sat there in the darkness a
long time, his head sunk forward on his
breast A half hour, may be, passed, before he
rose and marched with determined step to the
choir door, and up the stairs to the
familiar loft. He found match in his
pocket and lit the lamp that hung
near the bench, where Hezekiah for more
than fifty years had sung Gods praises and
carried the voices and spirits of the congrega-
ton with him. The dim yellow ray threw
gloomy shadows of the pew backs into relief,
just disclosed the pulpit at the further end of
the church, gave faint hints of evergreen fes-
toons on the walls, and here and there the
laurel worked words Emanuel" GLORY to
God in the highest" and SO on, that had been
placed there with great toll by the young
men and women Of the parish in honor of the
day SO near at hand; but had you been there
you would have seen only the patriarchal
form of the chorister with sadly bitter look
on his face gazing at the gloom about the
pulpit. Was he thinking how often he had
stood solemnly thus while the minister was
prayingl Perhaps SO, for after a moment
his lips parted and tremulous "Amenw
uttered softly on a high note, sung to the
evergreens and the shadows
Then Hezekiah looked about the bench in
front of him. He picked up one of the new
anthem books brought in by the quartet. He
glanced at the cover and let it fall. Taking
the lamp from its socket he held it so that he
could see, and presently drew forth the an
cent collection of anthems, every tune in
which he knew by heart, so sacred to him.
and vet SO speedily hidden away where it
should serve nobody He replaced the lamp
and turned the pages to Coronation" the
first piece sung by choir under his direc-
ton more than a lifetime ago. Fondly he
looked at the familiar notes and then, his
chest thrown out and his head held up, he
sung the grand old tune and its magnificent
words with all the fervor and all the power
that his voice ever had commanded. From
beginning to end the hymn rang through the
deserted gloomy church, and DR.. Williams,
driving by in haste to attend the ills Of far
off patient, wondered that the rehearsal
should have been continued SO late. When
the last note had ceased Hezekiah stood with
the book still open and his head still up, but
the tears were coursing down his face in
steady streams.
A. l.. l.. c..1r .,.%@ Oh xx,sNt
great pang at the heart he saw upon the
bench beside the volume of newfangled tunes
little book Of manuscript music. When he
was young man of not more than 80 HeZe-
kiah had taken it into his head that he would
write music, and the several anthems that he
had composed in pure harmony, but with
crude progressons, had been laboriously
copied into books, and had been used oc-
casionally ever since in church service.
What had they been doing with his musicl
Was it not enough that they should discard
him in his old age, and his ways and his
books, without hunting up his feeble but
earnest compositions to laugh at theml That
could not be forgiven! With melancholy
fingers he turned the leaves. His inspection
stopped at an anthem for Christmas, COM
posed on words taken literally from tho
Scriptures There it was, with its introduce
tory recitative for bass, and a double fugue,
as he called it, when the angels chorus was
reached. His wife had sung the treble be-
fore she left the choir, and when with patient
resignation he had laid her In the grave, his
daughter had performed her part, and since
she married and moved away the anthem
had not been sung. With what grand emo
ton he had heard the voices begin the first
fugal movement: