A min­is­ter re­turn­ing from Eur­ope on an Eng­lish steam­er vi­sit­ed the steer­age, and af­ter some friend­ly talk pro­posed a sing­ing ser­vice—if some­thing could be start­ed that “ev­er­y­bo­dy” knew—for there were hun­dreds of em­i­grants there from near­ly ev­ery part of Eur­ope.

“It will have to be an Amer­i­can tune, then,” said the steer­age-mas­ter; “try ‘His jew­els.’”

The min­is­ter struck out at once with the mel­o­dy and the words…and scores of the poor half-fare mul­ti­tude joined voic­es with him. Ma­ny prob­ab­ly re­cog­nized the mu­sic of the old glee, and some had heard the sweet air played in the church-stee­ples at home. Other voic­es chimed in, male and fe­male, catch­ing the air, and some­times the words—they were so ea­sy and so ma­ny times re­peat­ed—and the vol­ume of song in­creased, till the sing­ing min­is­ter stood in the midst of an in­ter­na­tion­al con­cert, the most no­vel that he had ever led.

He tried other songs in sim­i­lar vi­sits dur­ing the rest of the voy­age with some suc­cess, but the “Jew­el Hymn” was the fa­vo­rite; and by the time port was in sight the whole crowd of em­i­grants had it by heart.

The steam­er landed at Que­bec, and when the trains, filled with the new ar­riv­als, rolled away, the song was swell­ing from near­ly ev­ery car.

Shona