The Stickit Minister's Wooing/Tadmor in the Wilderness
TADMOR IN THE WILDERNESS
The calm and solemn close of a stormy day—that is the impression which the latter years of the life of Bertram Erskine made on those who knew him best. Though I was young at the time, I well remember his solitary house of Barlochan, a small laird's mansion to which he had added a tiny study and a vast library, turning the whole into an externally curious, but internally comfortable conglomerate of architecture. The house stood near a little green depression of the moorland, shaped like the upturned palm of a hand. In the lowest part was the "lochan" or lakelet from which the place had its name, while the mansion with its white-washed gables and many chimneys rose on the brow above—and, facing south, overlooked well nigh a score of parishes. There was also a garden, half hidden behind a row of straggling poplars. A solitary "John" tended it, who, in the time of Mr. Erskine's predecessor, had doubled his part of gardener with that of butler at the family's evening meal.
Few people in the neighbourhood knew much about the "hermit of Barlochan." Yet he had borne a great part in the politics of twenty years before. He had been a minister of the Queen, a keen and vehement debater, a dour political fighter, as well as a man of some distinction in letters; he had suddenly retired from all his offices and emoluments without a day's warning. The reason given was that he had quite suddenly lost an only and much beloved daughter.
After a few years he had bought, through an Edinburgh lawyer, the little estate of Barlochan, and it was reported that he meant to settle in the district. Upon which ensued a clatter of masons and slaters, joiners and plasterers, all sleeping in stable-lofts, and keeping the scantily peopled moorland parish in a turmoil with their midnight predatory raids and madcap freaks.
Then came waggon-load after waggon-load of books—two men (no less) to look after them and set them in their places on the shelves. After that, the advent of a housekeeper and a couple of staid maid-servants with strange English accents. Last of all arrived Bertram Erskine himself, a tall figure in gray, stepping out of a high gig at his own door, and the establishment of an ex-minister of the Crown was complete.
That is, with one exception—for John McWhan, gardener to the ancient owners of Barlochan, was digging in the garden when Mr. Erskine went out on the first morning after his arrival.
"Good-morning!"
John looked up from his spade, put his hand with the genuine Galloway reluctance to his bonnet, and remarked, "I'm thinkin' we'll hae a braw year for grosarts, sir!"
The new proprietor smiled, and as John said afterwards, "Then I kenned I was a' richt!"
"You are Mr. McCulloch's gardener?"
"Na, na, sir; I am your ain gardener, sir," answered John McWhan promptly. "Coarnel (Colonel) McCulloch pat everything intil my hand on the day he gaed awa' to the wars—never to set fit on guid Scots heather mair!"
Mr. Erskine nodded quietly, like one who accepts a legal obligation.
"I have heard of you, John," he said. "I will take you with the other pendicles of the estate. You are satisfied with your former wages?"
"Aye, sir, aye—a bonny-like thing that I should hae been satisfied wi' thretty pound and a cot-hoose for five-and-forty year, and begin to compleen at this time o' the day."
"But I am somewhat peculiar, John," said Mr. Erskine, smiling. "I see little company: I desire to see none at all. If you remain with me, you must let nothing pass your lips regarding me or my avocations."
"Ye'll find that John McWhan can haud his tongue to the full as well as even a learned man like yoursel', sir!"
"I have an uncertain temper, John!"
"Faith, then ye hae gotten the verra man for ye, sir," cried John, slapping his knee delightedly. "Lord keep us, ye will be but as a bairn at the schule to what Maister McCulloch was. I tell ye, when the Coarnel's liver was warslin' wi' him, it was as muckle as your life was worth to gang within bowshot o' him. But yet he never hairmed John. He miscaaed him—aya, he did that—till the ill names cam' back oot o' the wood ower bye, as if the wee green fairies were mockin' the sinfu' angers o' man. But John never heeded. And in a wee, the Coarnel wad be calm as a plate o' parritch, and send me into the hoose for his muckle pipe, saying, 'John, that has dune me guid, I think I'll hae a smoke.' Na, na, ye may be as short in the grain as ye like, but after Coarnel McCulloch"
At this point of his comparison John felt the inadequacy of further words and could only ejaculate, "Hoots awa, man!"
So in this fashion John McWhan stayed on as "man" upon the policies of Barlochan.
That night at dinner it was John who carried in the soup tureen and deposited it before his new master, a very much scandalised table-maid following in the wake of the victor.
"I hae brocht ye your kail, Maister Areskine," he said, setting the large vessel down with a flourish, "as I hae dune in this hoose for five-and-forty year. This trimmie (though Guid forgie me, I doubt na that she is a decent lass, for an Englisher) may set the glesses and bring ben the kickshaws, but the kail and the roast are John McWhan's perquisite—as likewise the cleanin' o' the silver. And I wad thank ye kindly, sir, to let the hizzie ken your mind on that same!"
With these words, John stood at attention with his hands at his sides and his lips pursed, gazing solemnly at his master. Mr. Erskine turned round on his chair, his napkin in his hand. His eyes encountered with astonishment a tall figure, gaunt and angular, clad in an ancient livery coat of tarnished blue and gold; knee breeches, black stockings, and a pair of many-clouted buckled shoes completed an attire which was certainly a marvellous transformation from John's ordinary labouring moleskins.
With a word quiet and sedate, Mr. Erskine satisfied John's pride of place, and with another (the latter accompanied with a certain humorous twinkle of the eye) he soothed the ruffled Jane.
After that the days passed quietly and uneventfully enough at Barlochan. Mr. Erskine's habits were regular. He rose early, he read much, he wrote more. The mail he received, the book packets the carrier brought him, the huge sealed letters he sent off, were the wonder of the country-side—for a month or two. Then, save for the carters who drove the coal from the town, or brought in the firewood for Mr. Erskine's own library fire (for there he burned wood only), and the boxes of provisions ordered from Cairn Edward by his prim housekeeper Mrs. Lambert, Barlochan was silent and without apparent distraction.
All the same there were living souls and busy brains about it. The massive intellect of the master worked at unknown problems in the library. Busy Mrs. Lambert hurried hither and thither contriving household comforts, and developing the scanty resources of a moorland cuisine to their uttermost. Jane and Susan obeyed her beck, while out in the garden John McWhan dug and raked, pruned and planted, his hand never idle, while his brain busied itself with his master.
"It's a michty queer thing he doesna gang to the kirk," said John to himself, "a terrible queer thing—him bein' itherwise sic a kindly weel-learned gentleman. I heard some word he was eddicated for the kirk himsel'. Oh, that we had amang us a plant o' grace like worthy Master Hobbleshaw doon at the Nine-Mile-Burn, that can whup the guts oot o' a text as gleg and clever as cleanin' a troot. Faith, I wad ask him to come wi' me to oor bit kirk at Machermore, had we a man there that could do mair than peep and mutter. I wonder what we hae dune that we should be afflicted wi' siccan a reed shaken wi' the wun' as that feckless bit callant, Hughie Peebles. He can preach nae mair than my cat Tib—and as for unction"
Here again John's words failed him under the press of his own indignant comminations. He could only drive the "graip" into the soil of the Barlochan garden, with a foot whose vehemence spoke eloquently of his inward heat. For the pulpit of the little Dissenting kirk which John McWhan supported by his scanty contributions (and abundant criticisms), was occupied every Sabbath day by that saddest of all labourers, a minister who has not fulfilled his early promise, and of whom his congregation desire to be rid.
"No but what we kind o' like the craitur, too," John explained to his master, as he paused near him in one of his frequent promenades in the garden. "He has his points. He is a decent lad, and wi' some sma' gift in intercessory prayer. But he gangs frae door to door amang the fowk, as if he were comin' like a beggar for an awmous and were feared to daith o' the dog. Noo what the fowk like is a man that walks wi' an air, that speaks wi' authority, that stands up wi' some presence in the pulpit, and gies oot the psalm as if he war kind o' prood to read words that the guid auld tune o' Kilmarnock wad presently carry to the seeventh heevens!"
"And your minister, John, with whom you are dissatisfied—how came you to choose him?"
"Weel, sir," said the old man, palpably distressed, "it was like this—ye see fowk are no what they used to be, even in the kirk o' the Marrow. In auld days they pickit a minister for the doctrine and smeddom that was in him. 'Was he soond on the fundamentals?' 'Had he a grip o' the fower Heads?' 'Was he faithfu' in his monitions?' Thae were the questions they askit. But nooadays they maun hae a laddie fresh frae the college, that can leather aff a blatter o' words like a bairn's lesson. I'm tellin' ye the truth, sir—Sant Paul himsel', after he had had the care o' a' the churches for a generation, wadna hae half the chance o' a bare-faced, aipple-cheekit loon in a black coatie and a dowg-collar. An' as for Peter, he wad hae had juist nae chance ava. He wad never hae gotten sae muckle as a smell o' the short leet."
"And how would Saint Peter have had no chance? Wherein was his case worse than Paul's?" said Mr. Erskine, smiling.
"Because he was a mairriet man, sir. It's a' thae feckless weemen fowk, sir. A man o' wecht and experience has little chance, though he speak wi' the tongue o' men and o' angels—a mairriet man has juist nae chance ava. It's my solemn opeenion that, when it comes to electin' a new minister, only respectable unmairriet men o' fifty years an' upwards should be allowed to vote. It's the only thing that will stop thae awfu' weemen frae ruling the kirk o' God. Talk o' the Session—faith, it's no the Session that bears rule ower us in things speeritual—na, na, it's juist thae petticoated randies that got us turned oot' o' Paradise at the first, and garred me hae to grow your honour's veegetables in the sweet o' my broo!"
"But why only unmarried men of over fifty?" said Mr. Eskine, humouring his servitor.
"For this reason,"—John laid down the points of his argument on the palm of one hand with the crooked forefinger of the other, his foot holding the "graip" steady in the furrow all the while. "The young unmairriet men wad be siccan fules as to do what the young lasses wanted them to do, and the mairriet men o' a' ages (as say the Scriptures) wad necessarily vote as their wives bade them, for the sake o' peace and to keep doon din!"
"Well, John," said Mr. Erskine, "I will go down to the kirk with you next Sunday morning, and see what I can advise. It is a pity that in this small congregation and thinly-peopled district you should be saddled with an unsuitable minister!"
"Eh, sir, but we wad be prood to see ye at Machermore Marrow Kirk," cried John, dusting his hands with sheer pleasure, as if he were about to shake hands with his master on the spot. "I only wish it had been Maister MacSwatter o' Knockemdoon that was gaun to preach. He fairly revels in Daniel and the Revelations. He can gie ye a screed on the ten horns wi' faithfu' unction, and mak' a maist affectin' application frae the consideration o' the wee yin in the middle. But oor Maister Peebles—he juist haes nae 'fushion' in him, ony mair than a winter-frosted turnip in the month o' Aprile!"
In accordance with his promise to his factotum, on the following Sabbath morning, Mr. Erskine walked down to the little Kirk of Machermore. It was a fine harvest day and the folk had turned out well, as is usually the case at that season of the year. John McWhan was too old a servant to dream of walking with his master to the kirk. He had "mair mainners," as he would have said himself. All the same, he had privately communicated with several of the elders, and so ensured Mr. Erskine a reception suited to his dignity.
The ex-minister of State was received at the little kirk door by Bogrie and Muirkitterick, two tenants on a large neighbouring property. These were the leading Marrow men in the district, and much looked up to, as both coming in their own gigs to the kirk. Bogrie it was who opened the inner door for him, and Muirkitterick conducted him to the seat of honour in the mountain Zion, being the manse pew, immediately to the right of the pulpit.
It was not for some time that Mr. Erskine perceived that he did not sit alone. Being a little short-sighted until he got his glasses adjusted, the faces of any audience or congregation were always a blur to him. Then all at once he noticed a slim girlish figure in a black dress almost shrinking from observation in the opposite corner. The service began immediately after he sat down.
The minister was tall, of good appearance and presence, but Mr. Erskine shuddered at the first grating notes of the clerical falsetto, which Mr. Peebles had adopted solely because it had been the fashion at college in his time; but it was not until the short prayer before the sermon that anything occurred to fix the politician's wandering attention.
Then, as he bent forward, he heard a voice near him saying, in an intense inward whisper: "O God, help my Hughie!"
He glanced about him in astonishment. It was the girl in the black dress. She had knelt in the English fashion when all the rest of the congregation were merely bending forward "on their hunkers," or, as in the case of not a few ancient standards of the Faith, standing erect and protestant against all weak-hammed defection.
When the girl arose again Mr. Erskine saw that her lips were trembling and that she gazed wistfully about at the set and severe faces of the congregation. The minister began his sermon.
It was not in any sense a good discourse. Rather, with the best will in the world, the hearer found it feeble, flaccid, unenlivened by illustration, unfirmed by doctrine, unclinched by application. Yet all the time Mr. Erskine was saying to himself: "What a fool that young man is! He has a good voice and presence—how easily he might study good models, and make a very excellent appearance. It cannot be so difficult to please a few score country farmers and ditchers!" But he ended with his usual Gallio-like reflection that "After all, it is none of my business;" and so forthwith removed his mind from the vapidity of the discourse, to a subject connected with his own immediate work.
But as he issued out of the little kirk, he passed quite close to the vestry door. The girl who had sat in the pew beside him was coming out with the minister. He could not help hearing her words, apparently spoken in answer to a question: "It was just beautiful, Hughie; you never preached better in your life." And in the shadow of the porch, before they turned the corner, Mr. Erskine was morally certain that the young minister gave the girl's arm an impulsive little hug.
But his own heart was heavy, for as he walked away there came a thought into his heart. A resemblance that had been haunting him suddenly flashed up vividly upon him.
"If Marjorie had lived she would have been about that girl's age—and like her, too, pale and slim and dark."
So all the way to his lonely mansion of Barlochan the ex-minister of the Crown thought of the young girl who had faded from his side, just as she was becoming a companion for the man who, for her sake, had put his career behind him.
In the afternoon Mr. Erskine sat in the arbour, while John in his Sunday best tried to compromise with his conscience as to how much gardening could be made to come under the catechistic heading, "Works of Necessity and Mercy." He solved this by watering freely, training and binding up sparingly, pruning in a furtive and shamefaced manner (when nobody was looking), but strictly abstaining from the opener iniquities of weeding, digging, or knocking in nails with hammers. In the latter emergency John kept for Sunday use the ironshod heel of an old boot, and in no case did he ever so far forget himself as to whistle. On that point he was adamant.
At last, after hovering nearer and nearer, he paused before the arbour and addressed his master directly.
"Thon juist settles it!"
Mr. Erskine slowly put down his book, still, however, marking the place with his finger.
"I do not understand—what do you mean by thon?"
"The sermon we had the day, sir. It was fair affrontin'. The Session are gaun up to ask Maister Peebles to consider his resignation. The thing had neither beginning o' days nor end o' years. It was withoot form and void. It's a kind o' peety, too, for the laddie, wi' that young Englishy wife that he has ta'en, on his hand. I'm feared she is no the kind that will ever help to fill his meal-ark!"
"I am very sorry to hear you say so, John," said Mr. Erskine; "can nothing be done, think you? Why don't they give the young man another chance? Can no one speak to him? There were some things about the service that I liked very much. Indeed, I found myself feeling at home in a church for the first time for years."
"Did ye, sir? That's past a' thinkin'! A' Machermore was juist mournin' and lamentin'. What micht the points be that ye liket? I will tell the elders. It micht do some guid to the puir lad!"
Mr. Erskine was a little taken aback. He could not say that what pleased him most in the service had sat in the manse-seat beside him, had worn a plain black dress, and possessed a pair of eyes that reminded him of a certain young girl who had taken walks with him over the hills of Surrey, when the blackbirds were singing in the spring.
Nevertheless, he managed to convey to John a satisfaction and a hopefulness that were all the more helpful for being a little vague. To which he added a practical word.
"If you think it would do any good, John, I might see one or two of the members of Session themselves."
"Ye needna trouble yoursel', thank ye kindly, sir," said John, "I will undertak' the job. Though my infirmity at orra times keeps me frae acceptin' the eldership (I hae been twice eleckit), I may say that John McWhan's influence in the testifyin' and Covenant-keeping Kirk o' the Marrow at the Cross-roads o' Machermore has to be reckoned wi'—aye, it has to be reckoned wi'!"
*******
Nevertheless, the agitation for a change of ministry continued to increase rather than to diminish. It took the form of a petition to the Rev. Hugh Peebles to consider the spiritual needs of the congregation and forthwith to remove himself to another sphere of labour.
Now, John McWhan's Zion was not one of the greater and richer denominations into which Presbytery in Scotland is unhappily divided. It was but a small and poor "body" of the faithful, and such changes of ministry as that proposed were frequent enough. The operative cause might be inability to pay the minister's "steepend" if it happened to be a bad year. Or, otherwise, and more frequently, a "split"—a psalm tune misplaced, an overplus of fervour in prayer for the Royal Family (a very deadly sin), or a laxity in dealing with a case of discipline—and, lo! the minister trudged down the glen with his goods before him in a red cart, to fight his battle over again in another glen, and among a people every whit as difficult and touchy. But one day there was an intimation read out in the Machermore Kirk of the Marrow to the following effect: "The Annual Sermon of the Stewartry Branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society will be preached in the Townhill Kirk at Cairn Edward, on Sabbath next, at 6 p.m., by the Rev. Hugh Peebles of the Marrow Kirk, Machermore."
Mr. Peebles read this through falteringly, as if it concerned some one else, and then added a doubtful conclusion: "In consequence of this honour which has been done me, I know not why, there will be no service here on the evening of next Lord's Day!"
It was observed by the acute that Mrs. Peebles put her face into her hands very quickly as her husband finished reading the intimations.
"Praying for him, was she?" said the Marrow folk, grimly, as they went homeward; "aye, an' she had muckle need!"
To say that the congregation of Machermore was dumfounded is wholly to underestimate the state of their feelings. They were aghast. For the occasion was a most notable one.
All the wale of the half-dozen central Galloway parishes, which were canvassed as one district by the agents of the Bible Society, would be there—the professional sermon-tasters of twenty congregations. At least a dozen ministers of all denominations (except the Episcopalian) would be seated in an awe-inspiring quadrilateral about the square elders' pew. The Townhill Kirk, the largest in Galloway, would be packed from floor to ceiling, and the sermon, published at length in the local paper, would be discussed in all its bearings at kirk-door and market-ring for at least a month to come.
And all these things must be faced by their "reed shaken with the wind," their feckless shadow of a minister, weak in doctrine, ineffective in application, utterly futile in reproof. Hughie Peebles, and he alone, must represent the high ancient liberties of the Marrow Kirk before Free Kirk Pharisee and Erastian Sadducee.
Considering these things, Machermore hung its head, and the wailing of its eldership was heard afar. Only John McWhan, as he had promised, kept his counsel, and went about with a shrewd twinkle in his eye. He continued to bring in the soup at Barlochan—indeed, he now waited all through dinner, and, though there was nothing said that he could definitely take hold upon, John had a shrewd suspicion that it was not for nothing that the young minister had been closeted with his master for two or three hours, six days a week, for the last month. But though it went sorely to his heart that he could not even bid Machermore and the folk thereof—"Wait till next Sabbath at six o'clock, an' ye'll maybes hear something!" he loyally refrained himself.
*******
At last the hour came and the man. Mr. Erskine, having ordered a carriage from the town, drove the minister and his wife down to Cairn Edward in style. John McWhan held the reins, the urban "coachman" sitting, a silent and indignant hireling, on the lower place by his side.
On the front seat within sat Mr. Peebles, very pale, and with his hands gripping each other nervously. But when he looked across at the calm face of Mr. Erskine, a sigh of relief broke from him. The Townhill Kirk was densely crowded. There was that kind of breathing hush over all, which one only hears in a country kirk on a very solemn occasion. Places had been kept for young Mrs. Peebles and Mr. Erskine in the pew of honour near the elders' seat, but the ex-minister of State, after accompanying Mrs. Peebles to her destination, went and sat immediately in front of the pulpit.
"Wondrous weel the laddie looks," said one of the judges as Hugh Peebles came in, boyish in his plain black coat, "though they say he is but a puir craitur for a' that!"
"Appearances are deceitful—beauty is vain!" agreed her neighbour, in the same unimpassioned whisper.
There was nothing remarkable about the "preliminaries," as the service of praise and prayer was somewhat slightingly denominated by these impatient sermon-lovers.
"Sap, but nae fushion!" summed up Mistress Elspeth Milligan, the chief of these, after the first prayer.
The preliminaries being out of the way, the great congregation luxuriously settled itself down to listen to the sermon. Machermore, which had hidden itself bodily in a remote corner of one of the galleries, began to perspire with sheer fright.
"They'll throw the psalm-buiks at him, I wadna wunner—siccan grand preachers as they hae doon here in Cairn Edward!" whispered the ruling elder to a friend. He had sneaked in after all the others, and was now sitting on one of the steps of the laft. It was John McWhan who occupied the corner seat beside him.
"Maybe aye, an' maybe no!" returned John, drily, keeping his eye on the pulpit. The hush deepened as Hugh Peebles gave out his text.
"And he built Tadmor in the Wilderness."
Whereupon ensued a mighty rustling of turned leaves, as the folk in the "airy" and the three "galleries" pursued the strange text to its lair in the second book of Chronicles. It sounded like the blowing of a sudden gust of wind through the entire kirk.
Then came the final stir of settling to attention point, and the first words of Hugh Peebles' sermon. Machermore, elder and kirk-member, adherent and communicant, young and old, bond and free, crouched deeper in their recesses. Some of the more bashful pulled up the collars of their coats and searched their Bibles as if they had not yet found the text. The seniors put on their glasses and stared hard at the minister as if they had never seen him before. They did not wish it to appear that he belonged to them.
But when the first notes of the preacher's voice fell on their astonished ears, it is recorded that some of the more impulsive stood up on their feet.
That was never their despised minister, Hughie Peebles. The strong yet restrained diction, the firmness of speech, the resonance of voice in the deeper notes—all were strange, yet somehow curiously familiar. They had heard them all before, but never without that terrible alloy of weakness, and the addition of a falsetto something that made the preacher's words empty and valueless.
And the sermon—well, there never had been anything like it heard in the Ten Parishes before. There was, first of all, that great passage where the preacher pictured the Wise King sending out his builders and carpenters, his architects and cunning workmen—those very men who had caused the Temple to rise on Moriah and set up the mysterious twin pillars thereof—to build in that great and terrible wilderness a city like to none the world had ever seen. There was his gradual opening up of the text, and applying it to the sending of the Word of God to the heathen who dwelt afar off—without God and without hope in the world.
Then came the searching personal appeal, which showed to each clearly that in his own heart there were wilderness tracts—as barren, as deadly, as apparently hopeless as the ground whereon Solomon set up his wonder-city—Tadmor, Palmyra, the city of temples and palaces and palm-trees.
And above all, the preacher's application was long remembered, his gradual uprising from the picture of the earthly king, "golden-robed in that abyss of blue," to the Great King of all the worlds—"He who can make the wilderness, whether that of the heathen in distant lands and far isles of the sea, or that other more difficult, the wilderness in our own breasts, to blossom as the rose!" These things will never be forgotten by any in that congregation.
Once only Hugh Peebles faltered. It was but for a moment. He gasped and glanced down to the first seat in the front of the church. Then in another moment he had gripped himself and resumed his argument. Some there were who said that he did this for effect, to show emotion, but there were two men in that congregation who knew better—the preacher and Mr. Erskine.
All Machermore went home treading on the viewless air. They hardly talked to each other for sheer joy and astonishment. "Dinna look as if we were surprised, lads! Let on that we get the like o' that every day in oor kirk!"
That was John McWhan's word, which passed from lip to lip. And Machermore and the Marrow Kirk thereof became almost insufferably puffed up.
"I'll no say a word mair," said the ruling elder, "gin he never preaches anither decent word till the day o' his death."
This was, indeed, the general sense of the congregation. But Hugh Peebles, though perhaps he never reached the same pinnacle of fame, certainly preached much better than of old. With his wonderful success, too, he had gained a certain confidence in himself; added to which he was almost as often at Barlochan as before the missionary sermon.
His wife came with him sometimes in the evenings to dinner, and then Mr. Erskine's eyes would dwell on her with a kind of gladness. For now she had a colour in her cheek and a proud look on her face, which had not been there on the day when he had first heard her pray: "O God, help my Hughie!" in the square manse pew.
God had indeed helped Hughie—as He mostly does, through human agency. And Mr. Erskine was happier too. He had found an object in life, and, on the whole, his pupil did him great credit.
He also inserted a clause in his will, which ensures that Hugh and his wife shall not be dependent in their old age upon the goodwill of a faithful but scanty flock.
And as for Hugh Peebles, probable plagiarist, he writes his own sermons now, though he always submits them before preaching to his wise friend up at Barlochan. But it is for his first success that he is always asked when he goes from home. There is a never-failing postscript to any invitation from a clerical brother upon a sacramental occasion: "The congregation will be dreadfully disappointed if you do not give us 'Tadmor in the Wilderness.'"
And Hugh Peebles never disappoints them.