The
Last Rose of Summer" yet, for you do not know very much about the first
rose of summer. And really, I hope you'll never know the ache and
disappointment you must know before you can sing that song, for it is
the sob of a broken-hearted woman. Learn to sing the songs you have
lived."

Why do singers try to execute songs beyond the horizon of their lives?
That is why they "execute" them.

The Success of a Song-Writer

The guest of honor at a dinner in a Chicago club was a woman who is one
of the widely known song-writers of this land. As I had the good
fortune to be sitting at table with her I wanted to ask her, "How did
you get your songs known? How did you know what kind of songs the
people want to sing?"

But in the hour she talked with her friends around the table I found
the answer to every question. "Isn't it good to be here? Isn't it great
to have friends and a fine home and money?" she said. "I have had such
a struggle in my life. I have lived on one meal a day and didn't know
where the next meal was coming from. I know what it is to be left alone
in the world upon my own resources. I have had years of struggle. I
have been sick and discouraged and down and out. It was in my little
back-room, the only home I had, that I began to write songs. I wrote
them for my own relief. I was writing my own life, just what was in my
own heart and what the struggles were teaching me. No one is more
surprised and grateful that the world seems to love my songs and asks
for more of them."

The woman was Carrie Jacobs-Bond, who wrote "The Perfect Day," "Just a
Wearyin' for You," "His Lullaby" and many more of those simple little
songs so full of the pathos and philosophy of life that they tug at
your heart and moisten your eyes.

Anybody could write those songs--just a few simple words and notes. No.
Books of theory and harmony and expression only teach us how to write
the words and where to place the notes. These are not the song, but
only the skeleton into which our own life must breathe the life of the
song.

The woman who sat there clad in black, with her sweet, expressive face
crowned with silvery hair, had learned to write her songs in the
University of Hard Knocks. She here became the song philosopher she is
today. Her defeats were her victories. If Carrie Jacobs-Bond had never
struggled with discouragement, sickness, poverty and loneliness, she
never would have been able to write the songs that appeal t