There must not be any contradiction in our prayers, for it is evident that He cannot answer them both." This was characteristic of his bluff frankness, as well as of his heavenly-mindedness--he "would not live alway." In July, 1881, I was visiting Stockholm, and was invited to go on an excursion to the University of Upsala with Dr.Samuel F.Smith.I had never before met my celebrated countryman about whom his Harvard classmate, Oliver Wendell Holmes, once wrote: "And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith-- Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith; But he shouted a song for the brave and the free-- Just read on his medal--'My Country--of Thee'" The song he thus shouted was written for the Fourth of July celebration, in Park Street Church, Boston, in 1832, and has become our national hymn.

When I met the genial old man in Sweden, and travelled with him for several days, he was on his way home from a missionary tour in India and Burmah.

He told me that he had heard the Burmese and Telugus sing in their native tongue his grand missionary hymn, "The Morning Light is Breaking." He was a native Bostonian, and was born a few days before Ray Palmer.

He was a Baptist pastor, editor, college professor, and spent the tranquil summer evening of his life at Newton, Mass.; and at a railway station in Boston, by sudden heart failure, he was translated to his heavenly home.

He illustrated his own sweet evening hymn, "Softly Fades the Twilight Ray." Among the elect-ladies who have produced great uplifting hymns that "were not born to die" was Mrs.Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, the daughter of the saintly Dr.Edward Payson, of Portland, Maine.