y, and of backwoods melodies, such as had been invented for
native ballads by "settlement" masters and brought into general
circulation by stage-drivers, wagoners, cattle--drovers, and other such
itinerants of earlier days. Music of the concert-room was also drafted
into the service, and selections from the inferior operas, with the
necessary mutilations of the text, of course; so that the whole school
of negro minstrelsy threatened a lapse, when its course of decline was
suddenly and effectually arrested.

A certain Mr. Andrews, dealer in confections, cakes, and ices, being
stirred by a spirit of enterprise, rented, in the year 1845, a
second-floor hall on Wood Street, Pittsburgh supplied it with seats and
small tables, advertised largely, employed cheap attractions,--living
statues, songs, dances, &c.,--a stage, hired a piano, and, upon the
dissolution of his band, engaged the services of Nelson Kneass as
musician and manager. Admittance was free, the ten-cent ticket required
at the door being received at its cost value within towards the payment
of whatever might be called for at the tables. To keep alive the
interest of the enterprise, premiums were offered, from time to time, of
a bracelet for the best conundrum, a ring with a ruby setting for the
best comic song, and a golden chain for the best sentimental song. The
most and perhaps only really valuable reward--a genuine and very pretty
silver cup, exhibited night after night, beforehand--was promised to the
author of the best original negro song, to be presented before a certain
date, and to be decided upon by a committee designated for the purpose
by the audience at that time.

Quite a large array of competitors entered the lists; but the contest
would be hardly worthy of mention, save as it was the occasion of the
first appearance of him who was to prove the reformer of his art, and to
a sketch of whose career the foregoing pages are chiefly preliminary.

Stephen Collins Foster was born in Alleghany, Pennsylvania, on the 4th
of July, 1826. He was the youngest child of his father, William B.
Foster,--originally a merchant of Pittsburg, and afterwards Mayor of his
native city, member of the State Legislature, and a Federal officer
under President Buchanan, with whom he was closely connected by
marriage. The evidences of a musical capacity of no common order were
apparent in Stephen at an early period. Going into a shop, one day, when
about seven years old, he p