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"The Weather is Bitter Cold" 135 |
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So Stephen Foster left Cincinnati for the last time. As he went aboard the Ida May he was, we must sorrowfully remind ourselves, a man whose musical genius was dimmed. He had completed nearly all of his great work: those songs which pass beyond period and locality and go straight to the timeless heart of humanity. Except for "Old Black Joe" and "Beautiful Dreamer/' his work and all that followed during the next five years in PittsÂburgh and New York were sad anticlimax.
When the boat drew out from the Cincinnati levee that November noon, the weather along the river, as the Gazette records,16 was "modÂerating, to all appearances." Like a portent for Stephen Foster the report reads further: "but towards evening the wind changed . . . and the weather is bitter cold." |
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