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"Why not write a poem for this tonight?" But the spirit of poetry was not with me that evening; and so I replied,

"No, I cannot at present; for I have few ideas and they are not poetic." The following morning Mr. and Mrs. Sankey were going for a drive, and they expected that I would go with them; but, to their astonishment, I said,

"Please excuse me today; as I have something else I wish to do." A few minutes after they left a number of students came in; and we had a very pleasant chat. Something that one of them said touched my heart; and after they went away I sat down at the piano; played Mr. Sankey's melody once or twice; and then the words of the hymn came in regular order as they now stand:

"O child of God, wait patiently
When dark thy path may be,
And let thy faith lean trustingly
On Him who cares for thee;
And though the clouds hang drearily
Upon the brow of night;
Yet in the morning joy will come,
And fill thy soul with light."

While the great majority of my hymns seemed to be the result of some passing mood, or of some deep, though intangible feeling, whose expression demanded the language of poetry, quite a number were called into being in response to a definite event in my own life. "Hold Thou My Hand," for which Hubert P. Main wrote the music, belongs to this class. For a number of days before I wrote this hymn, all had seemed dark to me. That was indeed an unusual experience, for I have always been most cheerful; and so in my human weakness I cried in prayer, "Dear Lord, hold Thou my hand." Almost at once the sweet peace that comes of perfect assurance returned to my heart, and my gratitude for this evidence of answered prayer sang itself in the lines of the hymn,

"Hold Thou my hand, so weak I am and helpless,
I dare not take one step without Thy aid;
Hold Thou my hand, for then, O loving Saviour
No dread of ill shall make my soul afraid."

After the death of the great Charles Spurgeon his wife wrote for a copy of this poem and said she had found comfort from hearing it sung.

Once while on a visit to William J. Kirkpatrick some of us were talking of how soon we grow weary of earthly pleasures, however bright they may be.

"Well" remarked the professor, "we are never weary of the grand old song."

"No," I replied, "but what comes next?" He hesi-tated and I said, "Why, glory to God, hallelujah." Mr. Kirkpatrick sang an appropriate melody and 1 wrote the hymn,

"We are never, never weary of the grand old song,
Glory to God, hallelujah!
We can sing it in the Spirit as we march along,
Glory to God, hallelujah!"

Besides this I have written hundreds of hymns for Mr. Kirkpatrick, many of which have been very popular, and are still being sung in all quarters of the Christian world. One day he played a beautiful melody and said, "Now let us have a regular shouting Methodist hymn, and I composed the hymn "I'm So Glad," the chorus of which is,

"I'm so glad, I'm so glad,
I'm so glad that Jesus came,
He came to save me."

"Speed Away, Speed Away, on your Mission of Light" was written after hearing the beautiful Indian melody which Mr. Sankey arranged for my words. The original Indian poem told the story of a young maiden who died leaving her father to mourn her un-timely loss, and how he was comforted by a message brought him by a bird she had sent from the Happy Hunting Grounds. This melody seemed so beautiful that we thought it ought to have hymn-words and " Speed Away" was the outcome of this feeling. I wrote it hoping that it might inspire someone to go into the mission fields across the sea.

One day Mr. Doane played the air to "We Shall Reach the Summer Land," and we thought it best to wait for an appropriate subject. A few days later a tele-gram came announcing the death of a friend; and I wrote a hymn to his music for the bereaved family. "No Sorrow There" was also written under similar circumstances. "God Leadeth" was inspired by the sympathy I felt with a friend in his struggles, and a num-ber of hymns have been written after conversing with friends concerning various phases of Christian experience. ''Press Toward the Mark" was inspired by a watch-night address by Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler and the music was composed by Miss Upham.

"Jesus, My All" was written as early as 1866. Some one was singing the air to the old Scotch song "Robin Adair," and I remarked how beautiful it was. Henry Brown said, "I challenge you to write a hymn to that melody." I immediately wrote the words following,

"Lord, at Thy mercy-seat,
Humbly I fall,
Pleading Thy promise sweet,
Lord hear my call;
Now let Thy work begin,
Oh, make me pure within,
Cleanse me from every sin,
Jesus, my all."

Another of the hymns written during Mr. Bradbury's life is, "Good Night Until We Meet in the Morning." One afternoon a little party of us, including Philip Phillips, William B. Bradbury, Sylvester Main, Harry Brown and myself, were talking about various things, and when we came to separate Mr. Phillips said,

"Good night until we meet in the morning."