| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
128 Youth's Golden Gleam |
||
|
|
||
|
cotton fields of the South, and they gladden the tedious watches of the sailor in every sea reached by American or English enterprise. It is hardly too much to assert there is not a family in this country where any musical taste exists, that has not been cheered with the melody of his songs. In fact they are sung all over the civilized world, the seacoast cities of China not excepted. We lately read of an American traveller (Bayard Taylor, we think) teaching "Uncle Ned" to the Arabs in Africa and explaining to them, at their request, the meaning of the words in their own dialect. A Paris correspondent of a Boston paper says, on hearing "Oh, Susannah'' whistled through the streets, he enthusiastically cried out "America for ever!"
Dickens speaks of its popularity in the prisons of England; and a friend who has spent some time in Central America says he has heard the natives amuse themselves by the hour in singing snatches of Foster's early songs which they had caught from the roving Californians.
Some account of these songs may prove interesting. For the main facts we are indebted to Mr. Wm. C. Peters. . . . |
||