The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1890-07-16
THE SONGS OF AULD LANG SYNE.
No Music IIalf So Sweet as the Memory OF
Those Tender Lines.

The mothers Of to-day DO not sing
as the mothers aid III lang syne." said
Il man whose business cares have never
overcome and crowded out the soul OF
poetry and the memory of a happy boy
hood. You seldom hear a woman
singing about the house now.
so it is. The modern mother does
not sing rs our dear old-fashioned
mothers used to sing. She has little
time to herself. and if she didn't have
the advantages of Il musical education
she says she cannot sing.
Then, too, the songs of to-day are
not like and never will be like those
old songs. They do not touch the
heart and give the hearts feeling utter
ance through the lips. There are
beautiful songs set to music, of course
and wonderful voices sing them on the
stage and in the drawing-room, but
how seldom it is we hear song that
thrills and charms us and brings the
pearls of feeling" to our eyes. a
voice pleases US and we bear home the
satisfaction of having heard an artist OF
artists, but we will forget the singer
and the song long before we forget one
word or note of the one who sang
Bonnie Doom and Annie Laurie"
There are those of us who will never
forget the summer evenings, the ripple
of the brook in the distance the stir OF
the woodbine leaves around the win.
dow, the sweet fragrance of the "blrk'
from the neighboring wood, when the
mother sang Alton Water" and rocked
her baby to sleep.
And then there were other songs that
stirred our childish hearts, The
Soldiers Dream:
Our bugles sung truce. for the night cloud hae
lowered
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the
When thousands had sunk to the ground over
powered,
The weary to sleep and the wounded to die.
Reposing that night on my pallet Of straw.
BY the wolf-scarng faggot that guarded the
In the dead of the night sweot vision saw.
And thrice ere the morning dreamed II
again.
Our childish Imagination could
picture the soldier, always handsome.
in his uniform lying down on the field
of battle to sleep under the stars. the
pine knots blaze soaring away the
prowling wolves, and he dreaming of
hearing his Gown mountain goats
bleating aloof," and of hearing the
sweet song that the corn reapers sung"
There was another song, old, very
old: "On the Lake Where Dropped the
Willow" the story of girl who died
in autumn. And: ''I'll Hang My Harp
on the Willow Tree" which later-day
Bacon-Shakspeareans tell US was dedi-
Gated to her Majesty, Victoria. There
was "Jeannette and Jeanot," "Old
Kentucky Home and ''Suwanee
River" and to-day we cannot listen to
o, take me to my kind old mother.
There let me live and die,
whether sung in soft, weird tones Of a
jubilee singer, the pathetic ones Of
little Kavanagh or the everyday street
Arab, without rush of tender feeling.
There was another song, a regular
bedtime song in its wooing sweetness.
1t was The Cuckoo:
When winter comes the woods Is my home,
In summer sing in the meadows.
How we liked to hear about the little
bird that hid itself away in the brush in
the winter, and in the springtime its
plaintiff cuckoo" cuckoo" was the
sure harbinger of south winds and warm
showers.
And last and best of all was that song
of "Clari, the Maid of Milan:
Mid pleasures and palaces though We may
roam,
Belt ever so humble, there's no place like
home.
No, there is no place like home. and
there are no songs like those of the old
time. and there is no music half so
sweet as the memory of those tender
notes.-BMfuiO NelUS.