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CHAPTER XVII |
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"THE WEATHER IS BITTER COLD"
"And I am sick at heart." —Shakespeare |
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I
T was late in the year 1858 that Stephen Foster made his final visit to Cincinnati. He was then thirty-two years old, with a record behind him of songs which, as Alexander Woollcott has said, "are now and for generations yet to come will be an enduring part of American life."1
How his own generation greeted his music, abroad as well as in this country, is indicated in an article appearing in the Cincinnati Daily Gazette on January 22, 1857.*
Extracts from this article are as follows:
FOSTER'S MUSIC
If popularity is any test of merit, to Stephen E. [sic] Foster's Melodies must be assigned a high rank. Probably no man's ideas have been more often repeated, when we consider singing, playing, whistling, etc. His tunes are a perpetual solace to the miner of California, the slave in the
* This article was recently found in the files of the Gazette by E. Jay Wohlgemuth, who led in Foster research in Cincinnati. |
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