"
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.
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