Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
And another tune still excites in me the sullen resentment that it
did when I first heard it. In those days, just as a fellow got to the
exciting part in “Frank at Don Carlos's Ranch,” or whatever the book
was, there was kindling to be split, or an armful of wood to be brought
in, or a pitcher of water from the well, or “run over to Mrs. Boggs's
and ask her if she won't please lend me her fluting-iron,” or “run down
to Galbraith's and get me a spool of white thread, Number 60, and hurry
right back, because then I want you to go over to Serepta Downey's
and take her that polonaise pattern she asked me to cut out for her,”
or--there was always something on hand. So what should one of these
composers do--I don't know what ever possessed the man--but go write a
Sabbath-school song with this chorus:
“There'll be something to do,
There'll be something to do,
There'll be something for children to do:
On that bright shining shore,
Where there's joy evermore,
There'll be something for children to do.”
I suppose he thought that would be an inducement!
One of these days America is going to be the musical center of the
world. When that day is fully come, and men sit down to write about it,
I hope they won't forget to give due credit to the reed organ, Stephen
Foster, and the Sabbath-school. The reed organ had a lot to do with
musical culture. It is much decried now by people that prefer a piano
that hasn't been tuned for four years; but the reed organ will come into
its own some day, don't forget. Without it the Sabbath-school could not
have been. Anybody that would have a piano in a Sabbath-school ought to
be prosecuted.
When music, heavenly maid, was just coming to after that awful lick the
Puritans hit her, the first sign of returning life was that people began
to tire of the ten or a dozen tunes to which our great-grandfathers
droned and snuffled all their hymns. In those days there was raised up a
man named Stephen Foster, who “heard in his soul the music of wonderful
melodies,” and we have been singing them ever since--“'Way Down upon
the Swanee Ribber,” and “Old Kentucky Home,” and “Nellie Gray,” and the
rest. Then Bradbury and Philip Phillips and many more of them began to
write exactly the same kind of tunes for sacred words. They were just
the thing for the Sabbath-school, but they were more, much more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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