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THE BABOOSIC.

South alike, now that North and South are one. It has been translated into one or two foreign languages, for it can be sung by any nation. Several hundred thousand copies have been sold since the beginning, and the demand is not yet satisfied. Indeed, the composer received a larger amount from royalties on the song during 1897 than during almost any preceding year. "Tenting on the Ground" has been sung on many inOld Camp teresting and historic occasions. In 1866, a great antislavery meeting was held in Philadelphia to celebrate the consummation of the long struggle. Lucretia Mott, Anna Dickinson, Susan B. Anthony, Fanny Gage and Robert Purvis were among the leaders. Every day for a week Wendell Phillips addressed the assembly, and every day Walter Kittredge and Joshua Hutchinson sang their great song. Perhaps, however, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" was never sung with more striking effect than in the great spectacular "America," which was presented at the Auditorium in Chicago during the Columbian Exposition. There it was sung by a chorus of over five hundred voices

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and was the central attraction of the composition.

It would be a mistake to assume that Mr. Kittredge is the composer of only one song. He began to write very early and has continued to write all his life. The larger part of these compositions, though sung by the author in his concerts, have never been published. Very many, however, have been printed in one form or another, and some of these have had a wide circulation, notably "No Night There," published by Ditson and Co. in 1874, and "The

Golden Streets," an earlier composition. "The War Will Soon published respectively just before Be Over" and "The War is Over," and just after the close of the Rebellion, were popular at the time. Some of Mr. Kittredge's other published songs are "When They Come Child of the Mountain" (1864), "Life's Marching Home" (1864), "I'm a Cares" (1865), "Make My Grave in the Lowland Low" (1867), "The Old Log House," and "Scatter the Flowers" (1889).

After the war, Mr. Kittredge went back to concert singing, which he followed for many years, long with Joshua Hutchinson and later by himself. He aimed to be nothing else than a minstrel of the people, and in that his success was great. There is

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A FAVORITE SPOT.

scarcely a town in New England that has not heard his voice, and the larger towns and cities of New York and Pennsylvania, as well, have received him at one time or another. At the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876, he sang with Joshua Hutchinson an original song, "Good-by, Uncle Caleb,' which was afterwards published. He was an early advocate of the temperance cause, and wrote a rhymed lecture, which was very popular with his audiences.

Jenting on

crowd of disorderly miners had made
some disturbance about tickets, in
which one burly fellow, partially in-
toxicated, was peculiarly exasperat-
ing. After the concert had begun and
in the midst of a song, he tramped into
the hall, stamping his great cowhide
boots with all his might. The dis-
turbed audience did not stir. Without
a moment's delay, Mr. Kittredge, who
was at the time a very slender but wiry
man, jumped from the stage, seized
the ruffianly giant by the collar, and

On The Old Camp ground. Composed 1868
By Walter Kittredge

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WALTER KITTREDGE'S

UNION

ceived soon after his return from Washington in 1892, and increasing years have kept him much at home. He finds the duties of his farm increasingly engrossing. Would you see him at home? You go westward from the little village of Reed's Ferry, which lies beside the Merrimac on the line of the Boston and Maine Railroad. You follow a sandy road out

SONG BOOK; through fields and pine woods, which

CONTAINING

Some of his most Popular Songs, Humorous and Sentimental.

BOSTON:

8. CHISM,-FRANKLIN PRINTING HOUSE,
No. 112 CONGRESS STREET.
1862.

Mr. John W. Hutchinson. There the two veterans met many old friends of war-time and made many new acquaintances. They were fêted and honored with the best, and sang again the old songs which still have power and life.

with

Mr. Kittredge remembers pleasure Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Greeley and Bayard Taylor, whom he met, among other famous men, at various times and places. With Joshua Hutchinson, who knew the poet well, he once called on Mr. Whittier at Amesbury. This was at the time when Whittier was writing his patriotic and war poems, which stirred the country like bugle notes. In reply to some praise from his guests, the poet said with characteristic simplicity, "If I have done any good I am glad, and if I have done. any evil I am sorry."

For some years, Mr. Kittredge has sung little. A disabling accident, re

seem to be advancing in a broken wave. You pass a little pond, and soon come out where the fields stretch away on either side of the road, with the Uncanoonucs rising beyond. Before you stands an old-fashioned farmhouse surrounded by magnificent elms, Mr. Kittredge's boyhood home. A little beyond, you see a pretty cottage, rather fantastically decorated and having a great bowwindow that reaches to the roof. By the door stand an oak and two Norway spruces, and across the road a grove of large pines. A well-kept barn with wide open doors is connected with the house.

Here Mr. Kittredge lives very quietly. At first sight you would hardly suspect him to be the composer of a song known round the world, so simple and homely is his appearance. But when his blue eyes light up with memories and his mobile face kindles with thought, you realize that you are with an unusual man, a man of intellectual power.

All Mr. Kittredge's tastes show a love for simplicity and simple greatness. Emerson and Thoreau are perhaps his best-loved authors, though Ruskin too is a favorite. Like John Burroughs, he is fond of all the school of nature lovers, if that free fraternity can be called a school. The writings of Frank Bolles, with their delicate delineations of New England scenery and the wood-life with which he is familiar, are especially dear to Mr. Kittredge. As he himself said, in speaking of these books, "I like them because they seem like nature itself." He is attached to his home and its

surroundings as only a lover of nature who has kept his home for a lifetime can come to love any place. All the region was once his father's, and most of it is still in the possession of his family. Behind the house is a hill whence Monadnock and the neighboring ranges are visible. Baboosic Brook winds down through fields and pastures near at hand. Beyond the brook is his birthplace and the old brickyard. Every spot has its memory of boyhood or manhood. Here he wrote a song once known and now

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perhaps almost forgotten; there a song, it be dearer, that never was may published; and always within doors is the place by the window where he wrote "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground," a song that will never die.

This earth-flavor he has embodied in his songs, which are simple and heart-felt melodies, truly "like nature itself." Many of them were composed while he was at work on his farm, and one at least was first written on an axe-handle in the woods. Withal,

Mr. Kittredge is something of a mystic. Certain of his best known songs came to him as he woke from dreams, and were written in the night. He is a firm believer in inspiration;-and why not, since nothing else can account for the pervasive power with which a simple lyric like "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" is vitalized. "When I wrote 'Tenting,'" he says, "I actually saw the whole scene, as described in the song. It must have been inspiration. They sometimes ask when the national song is going to be written. I answer, never except in some humble way. It can never be written to order. It must come from the heart of the people, with no thought of a public, in order to live."

That "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" still lives would be amply proven by the number of letters concerning it which Mr. Kittredge still receives. During last year more than a hundred such letters came to him, as they have been coming for thirty-four years. He greatly values these expressions of sympathy and interest, coming as they do from men and women of every condition and place. Last year he received a cordial invitation to visit the Hawaiian Islands, with the announcement of his election as an honorary member of the Kanai Kodak Klub, an association which boasts of "Mark Twain," Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Joseph Jefferson and E. S. Phelps among its honorary members.

Although he sings but little now, except at home or about his work, as has always been his light-hearted custom, Mr. Kittredge retains to a great degree the power of his mellow voice. It gives new meaning to some old ballad when sung with the expression which a lifetime of practice has taught. The pathetic refrain:

"Many are the hearts that are weary tonight,

Wishing for the war to cease, Many are the hearts looking for the right, To see the dawn of peace. Tenting to-night, tenting to-night, Tenting on the old camp ground,"

never was rendered with greater feeling than by its composer.

So he lives, a simple, great-hearted man, touched by the hand of time, but still youthful and buoyant in spirit, with much to remember and little to regret, not wearing his laurels in

sight, but sincerely unassuming. He has stirred and strengthened the heart of a great nation; yet he only says. with modest simplicity, "People sometimes tell me that I have done something with my songs. I can only say that I am glad if I have done so."

IS THE UNITED STATES A GOOD NEIGHBOR TO

J

CANADA?

By Edward Porritt.

UST before the recent temporary agreement was reached between the United States and Great Britain with respect to the Alaska boundary, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the premier of Canada, made a statement as to the relations between Canada and the United States, in the House of Commons at Ottawa. He had been questioned in the House by Sir Charles Tupper, the leader of the opposition, who had again put forward a suggestion that the Dominion government should make use of the powers it has possessed since 1897, of imposing export duties on pine logs and other raw materials imported into the United States from Canada.

"I do not believe," said Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in reply to Sir Charles Tupper's suggestion, "that either in the future or in the past any policy of retaliation towards the United States would have or could have had any effect in settling our difficulties with them. But I am quite as much in earnest as Sir Charles himself in this respect, that we must stand upon our rights and upon our dignity. But standing on our rights and on our dignity does not call upon us to enter on a policy of hostility to the United States, even though the United States

sometimes try our our patience very much. Even though they sometimes more than try our patience, still I think it would be the part of wisdom in us under such circumstances to continue to be patient, and not allow ourselves to be moved by any sentiment of irritation."

It may come as news to many Americans that the United States has ever tried the patience of Canada, that the United States has ever irritated Canada; for the despatches sent out from Washington in reference to the Joint High Commission persistently give the impression that Canada is wrong-headed and needlessly bent on acting an irritating part towards the United States. The questions with which the Joint High Commission is concerned affect Canadian interests from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, and it is worth while to examine them, to see what ground there is for Sir Wilfrid Laurier's statement that the "United States sometimes try our patience very much."

Nearly all the conduct of the United States of which Canada complains arises out of one phase or another of the protective policy of the United States. To begin on the Atlantic coast and with the fisheries

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