Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1902-12-15
North American.

North American
LET me write the songs of a nation, and
care not who makes its laws"
That was the guiding spirit Of sep"
winners life, and when he died the other
day he had achieved 1t 20 the full.
Who does not know Listen to the
Mockina Bird" and what is Home
without q hother2'' and yet who knows
that both were the work OF q Philadel-
phian?
They are not great ieces Of music, It
lie true. They are not classic" and the
devctee Of Wagner and Dvorak VIII COM
plain, perhaps, that there IL more OK
bathOs than Of pathoa in them.
But the people at large-the people for
whom such songs are wrttten-are not ex-
acting al a form OF technique. They
merely know that certain combination
of words and musical chords stirs them,
and has a trick of reaching to the inner
most sources Of feeling. That, to them, is
music. What else, indeed, is IL to the
classicistsf
septimus Winner-"sep'' he called him
self--had that faculty. He was a natural
born" musician. He lisped in tunes, for
the tunes came. He belonged to the same
class Of genius as Stephen Foster, who
wrote MY Old Kentucky Home"
OF late years Sep Winner has been
$1,000
his lips It was nearly a half century
ago that he wrote the 'Mocking Bird :"
and a pretty story is told Of the manner
Of its writing.
Winner was a very young man then
he was rs when he died on Sunday-and
he used to sit in his parlor Of an evening
and listen to a hooking bird singing in a
neighbours house across the way One
September evening in 1852 he sat thus en-
tranced, when suddenly the song became
a duet
Thrilled by the music, Winner dashed
out OF the house Sitting on the opposite
curb was tiny negro boy, his bare black
feet curled up under him, and his lips
puckered in a joyous whistle. And from
those lips there poured forth such pro
fuse strains of unprecedented art that
Winner was speeches..
When the song ended he grabbed the
pickininny and said:
Can you sing that thing with your
voice, sonny?"
Eyes. sab" answered the black boy, 81
can sing anything you gimme"
you come to my house this time to-
morrow night" said Winner, "and I'll try
| you"
Next day the song Of the hooking bird
was in musical notes. The little barefoot
negro was the first person who ever sans
| IL. before lOuH IL HdO SWCPN ONOA lA'
country like wild-fire.
Now It happened that next door to the
house where the original hooking birC
sang there was a woman who used t
| come out on her doorsteps Of an evening
| with a baby in her arms and listen while
| she called the baby names and mumbleC
kisses on its face, as mothers do so lonl
as the babies stand it.
Several years afterward Sep Winne
was going home one winter night, whel
| he saw the bsby-now little grown, o
| course-sitting on the doorstep, shiverinl
| with cold. Then he remembered that thu
mother had died a few days before, ant
that the father had hired a servant CIR
TO care for the little one.
Winner stopped and said: Where Il
your father, my dearf"
Hes gone out" was the reply.
"And where's the girl?''
She's gone out, too, sir.
well, what are you doing here in thu
cold?"
II am waiting here for my mamma"
Instantly Sep Winner flung his arms