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Updated: May 7, 2025
Many thoughts and many forms go past! That handsome man is gone; the rose lies in the psalm-book, and grandmother, yes, she again sits like an old woman, and looks on the withered rose that lies in the book. Now grandmother is dead! She sat in the arm-chair, and told a long, long, sweet story. "And now it is ended!" said she, "and I am quite tired: let me now sleep a little!"
Mr Cowie held out his hand to her, and said, "Well, my little maiden, what do you want?" "Please, sir, wad ye len' me a sang-buik?" "A psalm-book?" said the minister, hesitatingly, supposing he had not heard aright, and yet doubting if this could be the correction of his auricular blunder. "Na, sir; I hae a psalm-buik at hame. It's a sang-buik that I want the len' o'."
Instantly the guard was doubled, and Catinat searched: a psalm-book with a silver clasp and a letter addressed to "M. Maurel, called Catinat," were found on him, leaving no doubt as to his identity; while he himself, growing impatient, and desiring to end all these investigations, acknowledged that he was Catinat and no other.
The old Bible lay open on the stand, the psalm-book beside it, his glasses shut into the place where he sung at family worship a few hours before, and the psalm he sung his favourite was in the words of the quaint old version: "I will both lay me down in peace, And quiet sleep will take; Because then only me to dwell In safety, Lord, dost make."
Marian understood; she did not express surprise when he brought out a little worn psalm-book that she had never seen, and said: "Sing this for me, dear, to some old tune that fits it; I wish I knew what my father sang it to when I was a boy."
Suddenly, in the midst of her devotions, she hastily withdrew the offending radical handkerchief, and substituted in its place a heavy linen one, so closely pressed, as if by mangling, that it lay by the psalm-book as uncompromisingly stiff as itself. A smile passed over the features of the little girl, and she looked up into the face of her companion for sympathy.
He comes out of his closet after all night in it with his psalm-book wrung to pulp, and with all his righteousnesses torn to filthy rags; till all men escape Mr. Wet-eyes' society all men except Mr. Desires-awake. I will go out on your errand now, said Mr. Desires-awake, if you will send Mr. Wet-eyes with me.
And the glamour of eternal, sweet-voiced youth hangs around the gentle Cicely, through the power of the inscription in the old psalm-book, "In youth I praise And walk thy ways," the romance of the time when Cicely, the Puritan commonwealth, the whole New World was young. Sternhold and Hopkins' Version of the Psalms.
But this association with the old book is comparatively of our own day; and the most pleasing fancy which the "psalm-book of Ainsworth" brings to my mind, the most sacred and reverenced thought, is of a far more remote, a more peaceful and quiet scene; though men of warlike blood and fighting stock were there present and took part therein.
Then came the second ringing, when prudent, far-away worshippers took psalm-book and pocket-handkerchief in hand and started demurely, at a Sunday pace, for the house of God. At a quarter to ten the clergyman had been seen in the dim distance, and the fact was announced by "priest-ringing."
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