ON July 4, 1826, America celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

In the spheres where the stars array themselves to play fate, the day was marked for destiny. For on that day there passed out two who had been of America’s great. Thomas Jefferson died at noon, and at sunset, Adams. And at noon, as Jefferson breathed his last, Stephen Collins Foster was born.

America had lost two powerful leaders of her ear1ier 1ife; in their place she had gained one, who for a time might nurse her soul. A too-precociousness has been America's. We have grown great apace. But in so doing we have missed that morning twilight when a people feeds its yearning with romance and song and when it creates its fairies.

In partial compensation, perhaps, the fates gave this country Stephen Collins Foster to show us something of a national childhood and to immortalize some moments of American life. He is the modern son of that line of unnamed bards whose contributions to mankind have come down the ages in the songs and tales of folk.

The name of Foster has been kept alive by his songs, which are as distinctly folk-songs as, for instance, “Summer is leumen In” but some strange chance has obliterated almost all traces of his life, even in the short fifty-seven years since his death. The comparatively few facts that survive have been preserved by the labors of Harold Vincent Milligan, in his biography of the composer.

Foster's birthplace was Lawrenceville, a part of what is now Pittsburgh, but what was then a frontier town. His father had been a pioneer there, and after marrying Eliza Tomlinson in Chambersburgh, the couple took the 300-mile journey on horseback to Lawrenceville, where they made their home until their death.

In Lawrenceville were born their ten children, the ninth being Stephen; as the last had died in infancy, “Stephy” was the baby of the family.

In the annals of talent, the tale of genius embittered by material want adds dramatic intensity. Foster's life cannot be said to have been darkened by economic strife. His people were apparently well-to-do and prominent, his father having been mayor of the community several times. · Several of his brothers and sisters attained social prominence and his older brother, William, was the engineer who built the Pennsylvania Railroad over the Alleghenies. From material want, Stephen never suffered in his early life. Nor was he deprived of the privileges of an academic education. In truth, he disheartened his family somewhat by his dislike for school, running home from college after two weeks there.

One thing, however, Stephen was denied; the one thing which might have affected the history of this country's music. Beyond some elementary lessons, hinted at in the family correspondence, Stephen had no musical training whatsoever. The rigidity of the Scotch-Irish mind, which regarded as a weakness Stephen's love for music, found no room for a cultivation of his talent, and hence Stephen's gift was neglected.

As a youth, he strummed a mandolin belonging to his sister, and he is said to have played the flageolet; but the Fosters did not have a piano and most of his songs were composed at the instrument of a neighbor.

About his learning to play the flageolet a story is told. It is said that when he was seven he accompanied his mother on a shopping trip to Pittsburgh, and while in the music store of Smith & Mellor, picked up one of their instruments. In a few minutes, says the tale, he had mastered the technique of the flageolet and he astonished the clerks of the store by playing for them “Hail, Columbia.”

Another incident of his life seems to have a distinct relationship to his composing. When he was a lad, his mother received as a gift a Negro maid. The girl was very devout and was a faithful attendant at a church for colored folk. To this church she sometimes took Stephen. There is little doubt that at these meetings the lad gained his first ideas of music, and in the pathos of the black man's song he found inspiration for ·his own ballads.

When thirteen Stephen made his first attempt at musical composition. For the unusual combination of four flutes, he wrote the “Tioga” Waltz. This was performed at his school's commencement, and, according to a letter from his brother, was “rewarded with much applause and an encore.”

The following years were spent in some musical endeavors, but as Stephen never gave his talent much attention, or attached much significance to study, the boy drifted about for awhile seemingly unable to fit himself into his environment. His family always regarded him as somewhat original and as possessing a “strange talent for musick,” but as such a gift was not to be considered seriously, he was placed in the office of his brother.

It was about this time, in the forties that the Negro minstrel show became tremendously popular. Some years earlier an actor named “Daddy” Rice had had the idea of singing the song “Jump, Jim Crow” in costume. For the occasion he borrowed the outfit of a Negro attendant at Griffith's Hotel on West Street, Pittsburgh. The act proved “a sensation,” and the hilarity of the occasion was heightened by the fact that the old Negro, who had been standing in the wings, half-clad, heard the whistling of a steamboat coming up the river, and fearing that his hotel might lose prestige by his absence, rushed on the stage, frantically demanding his garb. Suffice it, that after this auspicious beginning the minstrel show flourished.

Among the traveling minstrel shows was one of which Nelson Kneass, who in addition to singing played the banjo and piano, was the impresario. To keep up public interest in the work, prizes were offered for the best songs. Urged by his brother, Morrison, Stephen submitted one of his manuscripts, “Way Down South Where the Cane Grows.” Although it did not win the prize, the song was sung in the minstrel shows and its great popularity influenced Stephen to devote himself further to composition.

Shortly afterward, W. C. Peters, who had published “Jump, Jim Crow” asked Stephen for some of his manuscripts. Attaching little value to them, Stephen gladly presented them to him, and Peters published some of them, making, it is said, about $10,000 from the works. The first song to be published was “Louisiana Belle,” in 1827. Followed others, among them “O Susanna” and “Uncle Ned.” The latter, the first of the pathetic Negro melodies, became enormously popular.

Foster's reputation had so grown by this time, that Firth, Pond & Company, a New York publishing house, and one of the largest of its time, wrote to him for copies of his manuscripts. “Nelly was a Lady” and “Brother Gun” were sent and published, and the relations between Foster and this publishing house continued for many years.

Thus at twenty-three, Stephen found that his songs had gained much vogue and he determined to devote himself entirely to music.

According to his brother Morrison, quoted by Mr. Milligan, Stephen now gave himself to “music as a science.” But there is nothing to indicate that he did much studying or even acquainted himself with the work of the masters. For a time he studied French and German and did some water-colors of which no examples remain. The following year proved one of the most prolific of his life and in it he penned many of his lesser known Negro songs.

This same year, also, marked his marriage to Jane McDowell, daughter of a prominent Pittsburgh physician, and the “Jennie” of many of his songs. To them one child, Marion, was born.

No word remains of the romance. From indications, however, the marriage seems to have been an unhappy one and the composer was left by his wife some years later. Whether the intemperance which marked his last years was the cause or result of the separation is not known, but in 1860 Foster came to New York, apparently alone.

However, the years that followed his marriage proved fruitful, and he wrote the songs which have marked him for posterity, “Old Folks at Home,” “Old Kentucky Home,” “Old Black Joe” and others.

In New York, Foster lived on the Bowery with little funds and practically friendless. As his family were well-to-do, the indications are that he had become estranged from them. The closest companion of his last three years was George Cooper, something of a poet, who wrote the words to many of Foster's songs of these years. According to him, Foster lived at 15 Bowery in a cheap lodging room, and there, or in a public house on the corner of Hester and Christie streets, which he frequented, many of his songs, including “Old Black Joe” were written. According to Cooper, Foster seems to have sent whatever money he earned to his wife and daughter. He drank a good deal and ate little, many of his meals consisting of raw turnip.

His end was distressing. Cooper, quoted by Mr. Milligan, describes it thus:

“Early one winter morning I received a message saying that my friend had met with an accident; I dressed hurriedly and went to 15 Bowery, the lodging-house where Stephen lived, and found him lying on the floor in the hall, blood oozing from a cut in his throat and with a bad bruise on his forehead. Steve never wore any night-clothes and he lay there on the floor, naked, and suffering horribly. He had wonderful big brown eyes and they looked up at me with an appeal I can never forget. He whispered, 'I'm done for,' and begged for a drink, but before I could get it for him the doctor who had been sent for arrived and forbade it. He started to sew up the gash in Steve's throat, and I was horrified to observe that he was using black thread. 'Haven't you any white thread,' I asked and he said no, he had picked up the first thing he could find. I decided the doctor was not much good and I went downstairs and got Steve a big drink of rum, which seemed to help him a lot. We put his clothes on him and took him to the hospital. In addition to the cut on his throat and the bruise on his forehead, he was suffering from a bad burn on his thigh, caused by the overturning of a spirit lamp, used to boil water. This had happened several days before, and he had said nothing about it, nor done anything for it. All the time we were caring for him, he seemed terribly weak and his eyelids kept fluttering. I shall never forget it.

“I went back again to the hospital to see him, and he said nothing had been done for him, and he couldn't eat the food they brought him. When I went back again the next day they said 'Your friend is dead.' His body had been sent down into the morgue, among the nameless dead. I went down to look for it. There was an old man sitting there, smoking a pipe. I told him what I wanted, and he said 'Go look for him.' I went around peering into the coffins, until I found Steve's body. It' was taken care of by Winterbottom, the undertaker, in Broome Street, and removed from Bellevue. The next day his brother Morrison and Steve's widow arrived. They stayed at the St. Nicholas Hotel. When Mrs. Foster entered the room where Steve's body was lying, she fell on her knees before it, and remained for a long time.”

The remains of the composer were sent to Pittsburgh for burial.

And so the story ends, sadly, as the stories of many others. It is a short tale, and a very vague one. Mr. Milligan, to whom we are indebted for the facts, says:

“I was two years in getting the material, and I was often in despair at not being able to find anything about it. Every one I asked had known some one else who knew Foster, but no one seemed to know much about him. At last I wrote to a niece of his near Pittsburgh, a daughter of Morrison Foster. She knew little about him, but she informed me that in her attic she had a box of old letters of her father which I might .examine. I took a flying trip to Pittsburgh, and in that attic-box I found practically all the material that I gathered in my book.

“It seems strange how completely evidence of Foster has disappeared. He has even been unfortunate in the choice of the memorials. For instance in Pittsburgh, a philanthropist has bought a large brick dwelling, supposed to be the house in which he was born. And in it stand a few relics, most of them belonging to neighbors, or his family; practically nothing of his own. The house is a fine one for a museum, the only fault being that it is not the house in which he was born. This one still stands, but a block away. In Kentucky, they have preserved as a museum the home of Judge Rowan, where the 'Old Kentucky Home' was said to have been composed. But I find absolutely no evidence that Foster was ever in Kentucky.

“There is a quaint story attaching to 'The Swanee River,' too. When the trains pass that river, I understand they are stopped for five minutes so that the passengers can stand and look at the famous stream. Incidentally, Foster never saw the stream. The song, 'Old Folks at Home,' was originally written with the words 'Pedee River.' But apparently Foster did not like the word 'Pedee,' for his manuscript has the word underlined. The story goes, that he went to his brother's office and asked him for some name of a river more poetical. Morrison suggested 'Yazoo' but Stephen did not like it. At last they took down an almanac and began to look through it. Finally Morrison read out the name, 'Swanee,' and Stephen shouted, 'That's it!' And so it became Swanee River.”

Foster's last lodging in New York has been renovated and altered, how many times it is impossible to say. To-day, at 15 Bowery, there is a hotel and quick lunch establishment. Facing Pell Street, a thoroughfare cluttered with hucksters' wagons, it is indistinguishable, outwardly, from the rest of the busy neighborhood. The present proprietor, who has just acquired the property, states that his deed indicates that it dates somewhere back to the eighteenth century. “There used to be a grocery,'' he said, “and before that a' lodging house.” A lodging house, and here Foster penned his last great song, “Old Black Joe,'' in 1863, not knowing that the words “I'm Coming'' were to be so tragically prophetic.

In the world of music Foster's niche is unique. To the classics his works bear the same relationship as does folklore to literature. Untutored, living in the outposts of the country, the songs he wrote were the simple, unembellished outpourings of a genius of melody. Whether study would have made him great in the academic sense is uncertain. His records show no particular interest on his part in the music of the day, and even while he lived in New York, he apparently attended no concerts, although at that time the Philharmonic Society had been started and musical life here was beginning.

His songs, perhaps more than any other songs, have traversed the world. Undoubtedly they are the folk-songs of America, and, more than any other songs, are indelibly part of our history. They have immortalized bits of American life.

Naïve, simple, yearning, they represent to America those vague longings common to individuals and nations. They are the symbols of that childhood to which all humanity, strident with progress, looks back wistfully as the period of undisturbed quiet. —FRANCES R. GRANT