378 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



can song that we have." I wish to speak of it again in just a 

 moment as the best American ballad. At this time the conviction 

 came to me that at home, in America, there are some good songs, 

 and I would go back and try to discover how new we are as a 

 country and how far along we are in song building. So I came 

 back, not forgetting as I passed London that there an American had 

 immortalized himself by WTiting the best home song that was ever 

 written, — ''Mid Pleasures and Palaces," by John Howard Payne. 



Hardly had I lauded home before I wrote to President Theodore 

 Roosevelt. I had heard that he had said: ''If we are to have Ameri- 

 can songs we are going to Imve them through the old slave hymn of 

 the South. The colored man is going to give us the basis for our 

 best American songs." So I wrote to Mr. Roosevelt who directed 

 me to get in touch with Booker T. Washington, who would direct 

 my itinerary. I wrote immediately to Dr. Washington, and I said 

 to him : ''Will you help me to get the genuine old slave hymns of the 

 South? He wrote back a letter beginning with a sentence that I 

 shall never forget. He said: "// you are sincere I shall do all in 

 my power to help you to get the old slave hymns." During that 

 winter he helped me all he could ; he told me where to go, to whom 

 to go; he wrote letters ahead. The chief thing I got, let me say, 

 was my own ability more or less to know what a real negro hymn 

 is. I learned it through a very primitive camp meeting. Briefly it 

 was this way. Four ministers arose, and they all preached from 

 different texts, and it was a sort of a case of the "survival of the 

 fittest," for one by one they dropped out, and the remaining one 

 proceeded to sing the rest of his sermon, repeating his text ns the 

 main stanza, the audience composing and harmonizing the chorus. 



At Farmers' Week at Cornell last year, after we had had three 

 or four days of talking and singing songs that live, one young man 

 spoke to me. He was to be married next June, and he wanted to 

 know about songs that would be good for liis home. Togetlier we 

 made a list of songs with which to start the new home. Shortly 

 after that an old man came to me. He was white of hair and white 

 of face, and feeble of manner, and he said to me: "I like the songs 

 you have been singing all week, but somehow my heart keeps turning 

 to the home songs of the other land." The young man about to 

 found his earthly home wanted the right sort of song. But the 

 old man was thinking of what we call the Heavenly home, and he 

 asked me: "Do you know: 'I've reached the land of corn and 

 wine'?" He sang it, and I joined. He sang another song, and that 

 song I love for it is simple and so much a song of my chihlhood. 

 And last winter when at State College I asked the college boys if 

 they knew it, few did. But we who did joined in singing it, and 

 to them all I said my tlionijht of why so simple an old hymn should 

 be sung the world over. We here can sing it better, understanding 

 it better. Let us all sing it. It is: "In the Sweet Bye and Bye." 



There is yet another hymn which all the world knows and sings. 

 Why? Because it is the prayer of the universaly heart, — simple but 

 great. Written as the prayer of one soul trying to voice its need 

 of Almighty aid it has become the hymn-prayer of all the world. Let 

 ns join in singing it: "Nearer my God to Thee." 



Few there be of that great family of persons whose childhood lies 

 well in the past who do not consciously realize from such an in- 

 heritance. A very few songs may constitute their riches and these 



