Des Arc citizen., 1859-08-03
From the New Y ork Evening Post. WHO WRITES OUR SONGSs

i l The musical composer who really fur
 nishes the great majority of our songs
 and whose productions have the wides popularity among lhe-masses of our peo ]ple, is known to very few of them, eyer | by reputation. The new melodies tha greet the public ear month after month and are whistled and hummed by thou sands-that are dumped on pianafortes thrumrned on banjoes. hreathed on flutes tortured into variations, and enjoy a wide though after all, evanescent popularity are chiefly the product of one fertile brain and that brain, as MT. Mcawber would say, is the brain appertaining to MT. Ste |phen c. Foster. This gentleman is na tive of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and has spent all his days there, excepting three years at Cincinnati. and two at New York He was born on the 4lh of July, 1926 (the very day that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died. and is, there- fore, now in his thirty-,hird year. His father, Mir. William B. Foster, was a PIusburg merchant, member of the State Legislature, afterward Mayor of .Alleghany City, and subsequently, occu- pied an official post under the federal goy- ernment. His eldest sister is the wife of Rev. E. Y. Buchanan, only brother of the President of the United States. Stephen c. Fosler is the youngest of his family.
 He enjoyed but limited opportunities for musical instruction, and took but few lessons. When nineteen years old he composed for a social quartette club, of which he was member. his first success .ful song, the popular. favorite, 1" Uncle Ned." It was shortly afterward sung at a public concert in Cincinnati, and re. ceived such applause that MT. William c. Peters, the music publisher in that city. requested the privilege of publishing it, which was at once granted. Mir. Foster next composed ]" Susanna, which was more simple in its style, and became even more popular. In private letter. MT. Foster writes: II had up to this time neither received nor thought of any pecu- niary remuneration for my efforts in the musical line. Imagine my delight there fore, on receiving for my next song one hundred dollars in cash! Though this song was not successful, yet the two fifty dollars which received for it had the effect of starting me in my present voca- ton of song writer"
 It would render this article too much like !" catalogue of popular and standard music" to give a lis. of MT. Fosters songs "Massas in the Cold Ground 7 |" Old Kentucky Home,' " Hi Boys, Car Iry Me Long" " Nelly was Lady" and :" Old Folks at Home" may be mentioned as among the most popular. His "Su- sanna" melody has been seized by many pianists (among whom may be mentioned Herz and Thalberg) as melodic theme peculiarly suited for treatment with va riations, and some of the other negro mel odies have obtained an equal popularity. Nor is this popularity merely local one. In many of the Southern States MT. Eos 
 ter's songs have been adopted by the slaves to enliven them in their corn husk- ings and field labors. Their fame has also crossed the ocean. In private let ter from one who has recently returned from an extended pedestrian tour through the border land of Scotland, where the songs of Burns and the older oral Scotch
 ballads are known to and sung by every one, occurs the following passage: "l spent several weeks amid the poetic hills of Etirick. along the braes of Yarrow, SC famed in Scottish border minslrelsy, and