Of course, the songs of happiness are many, too, but even these are in a measure the product of suffering, for man recognizes well-being very often only by contrast; continuous bliss he is apt to manifest by indifference. Hence we are not surprised that the strongest outbursts of joy, often wild and boisterous, are common to the nations whose dominant note is grief. But whatever the country, folk-song springs invariably from the poorest classes, and most often from the peasant, for, exposed to the phenomena of nature as well as to economic stress, his imagination is constantly stirred by the beauties of the earth, the mysteries and the tragedy of life. In looking for analogous conditions in America we may think first of the pioneer, the early settler, who no doubt had hardships to endure and privations to suffer. But by peculiar circumstances he was unfitted for the creation of song. Springing largely from a notoriously unimaginative tradesman's class, inspired by the stern principles of a piety that deliberately suppressed impulsive expression as sinful, and almost constantly engaged in savage warfare, he may hardly be looked upon as an originator of poetic beauty. Moreover, his English culture clung to him for generations, while politically he considered himself an Englishman. The songs he sang, therefore, were the songs of his fathers, and precious little social opportunity he had for indulging in their charm. Isolation and lack of communication effectually precluded a current interchange of ideas. In a great measure these conditions apply to the subsequent generations of all European races in America--the pioneers as well as the later immigrants. Their own traditions, whatever their nationality, are preserved for a generation or so to the exclusion of new influences; then the old songs die away and the memory of them becomes obliterated in the great stream of cosmopolitanism. Only in isolated spots, where a race, especially strong in tradition or racial peculiarities, or where a mere aggregation of people, united in a common mode of life, is sequestered, have these traditions survived or engendered new ones. Instances of this are the French Canadians, the Creoles of Louisiana, the Spanish-Americans of Mexico and California, and the mountaineers of Kentucky and Virginia. These people have a folk-song peculiar to themselves, which is founded, however, upon a traditional racial idiom, and may therefore be classed as 'adapted' or 'transformed' folk-song. For the indigenous American folk-song we shall have to look elsewhere.