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CHAPTER IV |
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FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES
"Dear friends and gentle hearts/'
—Words on a slip of paper found in Stephen Foster's purse at his death.
I.
W
HEN the slender young clerk of Irwin & Foster knelt at the services in Christ Church or St. Paul's, the supplication for all sorts and conditions of men had a living meaning for him. Stephen Foster possessed a love of human kind to which his songs bear perpetual testimony. m
So, though far removed from being hail-fellow, well-met, Stephen reached quick acquaintance with the human types making up the motley life of Cincinnati along the river front and in the commercial district. He was familiar with toiling and roistering America of this era. For such audiences he composed his early minstrel melodies. He came into touch also with the upper levels of the prosperous Queen City, the people who ambitiously reproduced the social life and graces of the South and maintained the literary, dramatic and musical standards of the Eastern seaboard cities. For such hearers he wrote his early ballads of romantic sentiment. |
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