canvas of that time, they are the emotional history of the times. It was
done by a boy who was not prophet enough to foresee the end, or philosopher
enough to demonstrate the conditions, but who was born with the intuition
to feel it all and set it forth deeply and truly from every aspect.

"While Foster wrote many comic songs there is ever in them something of
the melancholy undercurrent that has been detected under the laces and
arabesques of Chopin's nominally frivolous dances. Foster's ballad form was
extremely attenuated, but the melodic content filled it so completely that
it seems to strain at the bounds and must be repeated and repeated to
furnish full gratification to the ear. His form when compared with
the modern ballad's amplitude seems like a Tanagra figurine beside a
Michelangelo statue--but the figurine is as fine in its scope as the statue
is in the greater.

"I hope you will think Foster over and revise him 'upward.'"

All of us need to be admonished to speak no evil of the dead. I am trying
in Looking Backward to square the adjuration with the truth. Perhaps I
should speak only of that which is known directly to myself. It costs me
nothing to accept this statement of Mr. Allison and to incorporate it as an
essential part of the record as far as it relates to the most famous and in
his day the most beloved of American song writers.

Once at a Grand Army encampment General Sherman and I were seated together
on the platform when the band began to play Marching Through Georgia, when
the general said rather impatiently: "I wish I had a dollar for every time
I have had to listen to that blasted tune."

And I answered: "Well, there is another tune about which I might say the