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104 Youth's Golden Gleam
and not less than fifty are worthy of preservation. . . . [They] form the most important group of people's songs that have ever come from the pen of any single composer of music.
4-The character of Stephen Foster as he was in the golden gleam of his youth is revealed by his words and his songs and his actions, as these pages have already presented them. He wanted to get ahead, he wished recognition; but he would have success based upon good and honorable performance. Coming of a family that had pride in heredity and position, he sought to compose music of the style that would please "refined people." His fondness for the society of cultured persons, to which his brother Morrison referred,14 was not marred by snobbishness or self-advertisement. "He has never resorted to any claptrap or puffing of the press to bring himself or his music into notice," declared his newspaper friend, John Russell.15 When, because of the great popularity of his plantation and minstrel songs, he decided to 'pursue the Ethiopian business without fear or shame,"16 he expressed his determination to establish his name as the best song-writer in this field. "I have taken great pains with it," Stephen's reference in a letter17 to one of his songs, fairly characterizes his early work of composing. That his compassion for the old Black Joes of life was not |
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