From the Improvement Era, March 1969 –

Be Jubilant, My Feet

By Lael J. Littke

It’s funny how some things tend to draw members of a family together and make them realize they are a family. It seems as if sometimes a group of people can live together for years calling one another brother and sister, mother and father, without ever identifying with each other to the point that they put their backs together and face the rest of the world in defense of one of their number, saying, in effect, “He’s ours; he’s part of us, and you’d better leave him alone.” That’s the way our family was until the summer we got the piano. Oh, I don’t mean we didn’t like each other or anything like that, although we had the usual amount of bickering and scrapping that almost any family has. It was just that we never did think of ourselves as a unit, an all-for-one, one-for-all sort of thing, like the Three Musketeers, until that particular summer.

Mama didn’t have any such effect in mind when she bought the piano. She wanted it because she somehow had the idea that her children were being severely handicapped socially by growing up on a farm, and that playing the piano was one of the graces we had to acquire in order to get by when we eventually got “out into the world.” It took her three summers to save up enough raspberry money to buy the piano, but the year Eunice was 12, Melvin was 10, I was 8, and Herbie was 4, she finally purchased it.

I believe she was a little disappointed when we weren’t able to sit right down and play a tune, but we weren’t a musical family like the Nortons, whose two-year-old babies were like as not to pick out a tune of their own composition the first time they saw a piano. However, she signed us all up, except Herbie, for lessons with Mrs. Earle, and we practiced diligently until the novelty wore off, which took about six days. We continued to plod along with scales and little tunes called “Jumping Jacks” and “Mr. Frog” for about a month, and then Eunice rebelled.

“I’m not going to play those silly things,” she stated one day when it was her turn to practice. “It’s a waste of time.”

“You have to learn those before you can go on to something better,” Mama insisted.

“I don’t,” Eunice said in a tone that placed her far above us ordinary mortals who had to pick out “Trotting Ponies” and “Let’s Go Fishing” until our little fingers wore thin.

“All right,” Mama said, putting her hands on her hips. “Play something better for us right now.”

The funny thing was, Eunice did just that. She perched on the piano bench, spread her skirt, flexed her fingers as if she were Mr. Beethoven himself, and then launched into a quite respectable performance of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” with only a few sour notes here and there.

Mama was amazed. “That’s very good,” she said. “Play some more.”

“No,” Eunice said. “This is my favorite song. Betty showed me how to play it.” Betty was one of the Nortons and could probably toss off “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” with one finger and a couple of toes.

“Well, play that one again,” Mama said, probably thinking that it was just an accident that Eunice could
play it so well the first time.

Smirking, Eunice played it again, adding a couple of flourishes that made it sound almost as good as Mrs. Hagen, who played the piano for Sunday School.

“Mama,” Melvin said, “can I take lessons from Betty too?”

“Of course not,” Mama said, in a faraway voice. She seemed lost in contemplation. “Play it again,” she told Eunice.

As the days went by Melvin and I figured Mama would eventually make Eunice get back to scales and “Jolly Winter,” especially when she got tired of hearing “Battle Hymn” ten times a day. But Eunice was tricky. She practiced daily without complaint and the only thing she played was “Battle Hymn,” but she kept adding new things— a trill here, an interesting chord there— until it seemed as if she were accomplishing a great deal more than Melvin or I were doing with “Hip, Hip, Hooray” and “Kitten in the Yarn.”

Every day we listened to a dozen variations of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It got so that we were going about our work and play to the rhythm of “Mine EYES have SEEN the GLOry OF the COMing OF the LORD.” Papa took to milking the cows at march tempo. They seemed to enjoy it, especially since he sang to them in his good baritone voice all the while he milked. He sang all five verses. It was Herbie who retitled the song “Be Jubilant, My Feet” because that was his favorite verse and he knew it by heart. “Oh, be thwift, my thoul, to anther Him, be jubilant, my feet,” he piped over and over again until we all began to sing it with a lisp.

And all the while, Melvin and I plodded through “April Flowers” and “Tallo Ho” and a dismal duet called “Happy Little Breezes.” No one sang “Happy Little Breezes.”

By springtime there was no question but that Eunice could play “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” better than any one in town except for the Nortons, who by that time had moved away. Even Melvin and I had to give her grudging admiration, although we did so unwillingly, since she was so snippy about the whole thing and sneered every time we had to sit down and fumble through “In the Treetops” and “Funny Rabbits.”

I don’t think Eunice had ever given much thought to playing in public until the evening the ward teachers came while she was practicing.

“I didn’t know your girl could play like that,” Brother Blanding said when Eunice’s final stirring chords had marched off into silence.

Mother was pleased. “Oh,” she said, modestly, “she’s not too good yet. We’ve only had the piano about six months.”

The ward teachers were astonished. “Why, she’s just as good as the Nortons were,” Brother Phillips said. “Do you think she would play at the ward reunion a week from Friday?” He went on to say that he was in charge of the program and could certainly use someone like Eunice to go along with the jokes by Brother Frazer, the reading by Arietta Tims, and the song to be rendered by a ladies’ trio.

Instead of being horrified at the prospects, as Melvin or I would have been, Eunice was frankly delighted. For the next ten days all we heard was how she had decided to go on to a career as a concert pianist. She practiced twice as long as usual each day, adding new touches to “Battle Hymn,” such as doing the melody in the bass clef during the verse and then running in a fast arpeggio to the treble for the glory, glories, as Herbie called them. Mama had a hard time getting Melvin and me to practice during that time, even though we were up to a tune we both liked called “The White Seal’s Lullaby.” But even that didn’t sound anywhere near as good as “Battle Hymn.”

As we walked to the church house on the night of the ward reunion, Eunice was practically delirious with anticipation of her coming triumph. “Everybody will be so surprised,” she babbled. “I haven’t told a soul I can play so well. Maybe I’ll get asked to go play in Roscoe or even over in Elk Valley.” Obviously she envisioned a whole concert tour as a result of this evening’s performance.

Instead of calling her down for her lack of humility, Mama and Papa seemed fully as excited as Eunice. Up until that time all of us children had been rather doltish about displaying any talent our parents could hang their pride on. Even Melvin and I were preparing ourselves to bask in- the praise that would most certainly come to our family after Eunice played.

The hall was filled to capacity with former and present members of our ward by the time we got there. The program was to be first, followed by a dinner in the basement, and then a dance when the chairs had been cleared out of the hall. This was by far the biggest social event of the year in our little town.

Eunice hadn’t been told where on the program she was to perform, so she chewed her nails through the first half hour, figuring that Brother Phillips had forgotten he had asked her to play. All the other numbers went on— the jokes by Brother Frazer, who always got big laughs by using the names of our ward people in his stories; two readings by Arietta Tims; the rather shaky rendition by the ladies’ trio; the tribute to the pioneers who had settled our valley. Each number was followed by enthusiastic but short-lived applause. It had been a long time since anybody but the Nortons had been asked for an encore, since Brother Frazer always told his entire repertoire of new jokes the first time he stood up, Arietta Tims always gave two readings without sitting down in between because she said if she was going to go to all the trouble of learning two readings, she wasn’t going to take the chance of not getting to give one of them, and the ladies’ trio always said it was all they could do to get through one song without being overcome by fright.

At last, right at the end, Brother Phillips presented his jewel.

“Our final number,” he boomed, “will be a piano solo by Miss Eunice Blake. She will play ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

A murmur ran around the crowd. Eunice Blake? No one was aware that Eunice Blake even knew one end of the piano from the other.

Eunice got up and started rather limply toward the old upright piano on the stage, but by the time she had taken a dozen steps all her confidence returned. She strutted up the steps and sat down on the bench, carefully arranging her skirt. She flexed her fingers while the audience waited. Then suddenly she raised her hands and crashed into a resounding “Glory, glory, hallelujah,” which practically knocked the audience off the chairs. She had decided to do it that way to get their attention; then she would tone down to some soft, melodic passages from which she would work back up to a mighty crescendo.

The effect was electrifying. By the time she finished playing, the audience was on its feet, and Grandpa Beal, who always led the Fourth of July parade in his Spanish-American War uniform, could scarcely keep from marching up and down the aisles.

There was a burst of applause, which overwhelmed even Eunice’s mighty chords. Mama and Papa beamed with pride, and Melvin and I were proud that she was our sister. Herbie jumped up and down, screaming, “Glory, glory, hallelujah.”

Eunice’s face was flushed with triumph as she stood up and bowed to the audience. I don’t know where she learned to bow like that, but she did it as if she had been accepting applause all her life.

Again and again she bowed. Then, as the audience continued to applaud, her look of triumph was replaced by one of confusion.

“They’re clapping her up,” Herbie exclaimed, his own hands spatting together so hard that his fat cheeks jiggled.

Suddenly Mama and Papa looked at one another in dismay, and even Melvin and I felt a chill. Not one of us, including Eunice, had thought about an encore. But now the audience was asking for— nay, demanding—one.

“Play some more,” someone called, and several people repeated it.

Eunice was bewildered. She came to the edge of the stage and said something, but no one would listen. Finally, with a frightened look out at us, she went back to the piano. Mama stiffened and held her breath, and Papa groaned a little, way down deep in his throat. “Poor little kid,” he whispered.

The audience quieted and Eunice cast one more desperate look out at us. She said later that she considered doing “Battle Hymn” again but figured that it wouldn’t be right to play the same thing twice. So she played “Kittens at Play.” I could have done it better than she did. Herbie could have done it better. Her hands trembled, and she hit all the wrong notes.

The audience was stupefied. What had happened to the artiste who had sat there a few minutes before? This was just plain Eunice Blake, plunking through a silly tune any child could play. Was someone trying to put something over on them? Fickle, as any audience is likely to be, they forgot the majesty of her first rendition. What they would remember was her laborious struggle through “Kittens at Play.”

There was some polite applause at the end as Eunice slunk to her seat. Mama whispered, “We’re proud of you,” but Melvin and I slid down in our chairs. Papa, his arm around Eunice, made us stay for dinner, even though none except Herbie managed to eat much. People were polite. They told Eunice that she did fine, although their eyes slid around a little when they said it. We didn’t stay for the dance. Eunice wanted to go home.

“Mama,” she said as we walked along, “may I take lessons from Mrs. Earle again?”

“You certainly may,” Mama said. Then she added, “I think you have real talent.”

“Not as much as I thought I had,” Eunice whispered.

Melvin cleared his throat. “I’ll bet it won’t take you any time at all to play ‘Welcome to May’ as well as me and Darlene.”

Eunice winced a little, and suddenly I was sorry for her. Maybe it wasn’t good for something to come too easy.

“Maybe Mrs. Earle can start you out in a different book,” Mama said. I don’t think she could face three practice periods a day on “Welcome to May.”

“Mama,” Eunice said, and then was quiet for so long we thought she wasn’t going to say anything anyway. “Mama,” she finally continued, “I found out something. You can’t play a concert if you only know one tune.”

Mama, Papa, Melvin, and I all moved in close to Eunice. She had been proud, oh, indeed she had been proud. But then so had we— and eager, too, to share in her glory. We had all taken a tumble, but she the farthest of all. And what was a family for if not to get in there and pick up the pieces after a fall?

Melvin and I each took one of Eunice’s hands. People might laugh at what she had done, but they just better not laugh in front of us. Eunice smiled at us and squeezed our hands. Mama and Papa walked close on our heels, their hands touching our arms now and then.

Only Herbie marched on ahead. “Be thwift, my thoul, to anther Him, be jubilant, my feet,” he sang, and all of us unconsciously fell into step.