Another favorite hymn, in an easy metre, was John Wesley's triumphant review of life in his middle age. The tune, although marked in the music-books C.P.M., and thus indicating some difficulty, was really as simple as it was lively, and carried the voice along like the music of a meadow stream:
"How happy is the pilgrim's lot, How free from every anxious thought, From worldly hope and fear! Confined to neither court nor cell, His soul disdains on earth to dwell-- He only sojourns here."
Mrs. Woods was singing as usual about her work, when Jason Lee rapped at her door.
"Father Lee," said Mrs. Woods, "can I trust my eyes!--come again to see me, away out here in the timber? Well, you are welcome. I have got something on my mind, and I have long been wanting to have a talk with you. How is the mission at the Dalles?"
"It is prospering, but I regard it as my duty to leave it and go back to the East; and this may be my farewell visit, though I expect to come back again."
"Why, Father Lee, what has changed your mind? You surely can not think it your duty to leave this great country in the Oregon! You are needed here if anywhere in this world."
"Yes, but it is on account of this country on the Oregon being great, as you call it, that I must go away. It was once my calling in life to become a missionary to the Indians of Oregon, and to see this wonderful land. The same Voice that called me to that work calls me again to go back to tell the people of the East of their great opportunity here. I owe it to my country's future to do this. I have eaten the grapes of a promised land, and I must return to my own people with the good report. I believe that the best life of America will yet be here--it seems to be so revealed to me. My mission was to the Indians; it is now to induce colonies to come to the Oregon."
"Well, each heart knows its own calling and duty, and none of us are led alike. Father Lee, Gretchen has been reprovin' me, though she shouldn't, perhaps, being a girl. She was sassy to me, but she meant well. She is a well-meanin' girl, though I have to be hard on her sometimes--it is my duty to be, you know.
"Well, some months ago, more than a year, an Injun ran away with my best saw, and that gave me a prejudice against the Injuns, I suppose. Afterward, Young Eagle's Plume--Benjamin, the chief's boy--insulted me before the school by takin' a stick out of my hand, and I came to dislike him, and he hates me. There are many Injuns in the timber now, and they all cast evil looks at me whenever I meet them, and these things hint that they are goin' to capture me at the Potlatch and carry me away. I hate Injuns.