another in favor, to know what time "Old Dan Tucker," "Oh, Susannah!" "The Old Folks at Home," "Old Dog Tray," "The Silver Moon," "Jordan is a Hard Road to Travel," "Out of the Wilderness," "Dixie," and "John Brown," held the public ear. He did not live to play the "Cruel War," nor "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp," nor to tell me this history of songs; and the treasures of his poor old head were lost to me and to the public forever. No doubt the owners of the museum turned their proprietorship of him to the best possible account after his death by having his skeleton properly prepared for preservation, and hung up among their other anatomical curiosities.
It is surprising that it should be so, and yet it is probable, that the greater number of the songs which this old man played on the organ during the years which he turned it, were written by one man—Stephen Collins Foster.
Whether it is or is not true that poets are born, not made, it is certainly true that musicians are born. It would seem as though sometimes a human organism became possessed of a spirit of music, wresting it from all the ordinary routine of human life, to be simply the instrument from which should be poured forth strange and magical melodies. Thus we hear of children, of blind persons, of a poor, uneducated colored boy, possessing musical taste and touch that are wonderful. With something like the same thought we are compelled to read the life of America's great song composer, a gifted and wayward man, born with a genius that has made itself felt wherever songs are sung, and yet living an eccentric and unfortunate life. He was born, as we learn from a sketch by Mr. Geo. W. Birdseye, July 4, 1826, in Pittsburg, and died January 13, 1864, in the New York Hospital, to which place he had been removed from the American Hotel in the Bowery. At the age of seven years he learned to play the flageolet without lessons. His first song was " Oh Susannah," published by Peters, of Cincinnati; his second, "Open thy Lattice, Love," published by George Willis, of Baltimore, both in 1842, when he was only sixteen years of age. It is said that his first successful effort at composition was inspired by a band of negro minstrels performing in his native town. Going home with their melodies ringing in his mind, he wrote that wild piece of nonsense called the "Camptown Races," with its jingling chorus of "Du da, du da, da." "Old Uncle Ned," from his pen, was published in 1846. From that time onward he wrote a wonderful series of songs. The works of all the other American composers together, up to the year 1864, will not equal those of Foster in the degree of their popularity. Among his songs are, for instance, "Old Folks at Home," "Massa's in the cold, cold Ground," Old Dog Tray," "Nellie was a Lady," "Ellen Bayne," "Jennie with the Light Brown Hair," "Oh, Boys! Carry me
