that have obsessed the world of music
lovers, has been told of numberless young composers on their way to
fame, but died out in the blaze of their later work. I have no doubt
they told it of Foster, as they did also of Hays. And Colonel Hays
doubtless repeated it to you as the intimate gossip about Foster.

"I have an article written by Colonel Hays and published in and cut from
The Courier-Journal some twelve years after the composer's death, in
which he sketches the life and work of Stephen Collins Foster. In that
article he lays especial stress upon the surprising originality of the
Foster themes and of their musical setting. He praises their distinct
American or rather native inspiration and flavor, and describes from
his own knowledge of Foster how they were 'written from his heart.' No
mention or suggestion in it of any German or other origin for any of
those melodies that the world then and now cherishes as American in
costume, but universal in appeal. While you may have heard something in
Schubert's compositions that suggested something in Foster's most famous
song, still I venture to say it was only a suggestion, such as often
arises from the works of composers of the same general type. Schubert
and Foster were both young sentimentalists and dreamers who must have
had similar dreams that found expression in their similar progressions.

"The German musicians from whom Foster got inspiration to work were
Beethoven, Glueck, Weber, Mozart. He was a student of all of them and of
the Italian school also, as some of his songs show. Foster's first and
only music teacher--except in the 'do-re-mi' exercises in his schoolboy
life--testifies that Foster's musical apprehension was so quick, his
intuitive grasp of its science so complete that after a short time there
was nothing he could teach him of the theory of composition; that his
pupil went straight to the masters and got illustration and discipline
for himself.

"This was to be expected of a precocious genius who had written a
concerted piece for flutes at thirteen, who was trying his wings on love
songs at sixteen, and before he was twenty-one had composed several of
the most famous of his American melodies, among them Oh Susannah, Old
Dog Tray and Old Uncle Ned. As in other things he taught himself music,
but he studied it ardently at the shrines of the masters. He became a
master of the art of song writing. If anybody cares to hunt up the piano
scores that Verdi