dy of Old Folks at
Home may be found in Schubert's posthumous Rosemonde admits not of
contradiction for there it is, and this would seem to be in some sort
corroborative evidence of the truth of Hays' story.

Among these letters comes one from Young E. Allison which is entitled to
serious consideration. Mr. Allison is a gentleman of the first order
of character and culture, an editor and a musician, and what he writes
cannot fail to carry with it very great weight. I need make no apology
for quoting him at length.

"I have long been collecting material about Foster from his birth to
his death," says Mr. Allison, "and aside from his weak and fatal love
of drink, which developed after he was twenty-five, and had married, his
life was one continuous devotion to the study of music, of painting, of
poetry and of languages; in point of fact, of all the arts that appeal
to one who feels within him the stir of the creative. He was, quite
singularly enough, a fine mathematician, which undoubtedly aided him in
the study of music as a science, to which time and balance play such an
important part. In fact, I believe it was the mathematical devil in
his brain that came to hold him within such bare and primitive forms of
composition and so, to some extent, to delimit the wider development of
his genius.

"Now as to Foster's drinking habits, however unfortunate they proved to
him they did not affect the quality of his art as he bequeathed it to
us. No one cares to recall the unhappy fortunes of Burns, De Musset,
Chopin or--even in our own time--of O. Henry, and others who might
be named. In none of their productions does the hectic fever of
over-stimulation show itself. No purer, gentler or simpler aspirations
were ever expressed in the varying forms of music and verse than flowed
from Foster's pen, even as penetrating benevolence came from the pen of
O. Henry, embittered and solitary as his life had been. Indeed when we
come to regard what the drinkers of history have done for the world in
spite of the artificial stimulus they craved, we may say with Lincoln as
Lincoln said of Grant, 'Send the other generals some of the same brand.'

"Foster was an aristocrat of aristocrats, both by birth and gifts. He
inherited the blood of Richard Steele and of the Kemble family, noted in
English letters and dramatic annals. To these artistic strains he
added undoubtedly the musical temperament of an Italian grandmother or
great-grand-mother.