_The Tune._

The music of the old camp-meeting refrain,--

Say, brothers will you meet us?

--or,--

O brother, will you meet me,

(No. 173 in the Revivalist,) was written in 1855, by John William Steffe, of Richmond, Va., for a fire company, and was afterwards arranged by Franklin H. Lummis. The air of the "John Brown Song" was caught from this religious melody. The old hymn-tune had the "Glory, Hallelujah" coda, cadenced off with, "For ever, ever more."

In 1860-61 the garrison of soldiers at work on the half-dismantled defenses of Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, were fain to lighten labor and mock fatigue with any species of fun suggested by circumstances or accident, and, as for music, they sang everything they could remember or make up. John Brown's memory and fate were fresh in the Northern mind, and the jollity of the not very reverent army men did not exclude frequent allusions to the rash old Harper's Ferry hero.

A wag conjured his spirit into the camp with a witticism as to what he was doing, and a comrade retorted,

"Marchin' on, of course."

A third cried, "Pooh, John Brown's underground."

A serio-comic debate added more words, and in the midst of the banter, a musical fellow strung a rhythmic sentence and trolled it to the Methodist tune. "John Brown's body lies a mould'rin' in the ground" was taken up by others who knew the air, the following line was improvised almost instantly, and soon, to the accompaniment of pick, shovel and crowbar,--

His soul goes marching on,

--rounded the couplet with full lung power through all the repetitions, till the inevitable "glory, glory hallelujah" had the voice of every soldier in the fort. The song "took," and the marching chorus of the Federal armies of the Civil War was started on its way. Mrs. Howe gave it a poem that made its rusticity sublime, and the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" began a career that promises to run till battle hymns cease to be sung.

Julia Ward was born in New York city, May 27, 1819. In 1843 she became the wife of Samuel Gridley Howe, the far-famed philanthropist and champion of liberty, and with him edited an anti-slavery paper, the Boston Commonwealth, until the Civil War closed its mission. During the war she was active and influential--and has never ceased to be so--in the cause of peace and justice, and in every philanthropic movement. Her great hymn first brought her prominently before the public, but her many other writings would have made a literary reputation. Her four surviving children are all eminent in the scientific and literary world.

KELLER'S AMERICAN HYMN.

Naturally the title suggests the authorship of the ode, but fate made Keller a musician rather than a poet and hymnist, and the honors of the fine anthem are divided. At the grand performance which created its reputation, the hymn of Dr. O.W. Holmes was substituted for the composer's words. This is Keller's first stanza:

Speed our republic, O Father on high! Lead us in pathways of justice and right, Rulers, as well as the ruled, one and all, Girdle with virtue the armor of might. Hail! three times hail, to our country and flag! Rulers, as well as the ruled, one and all, Girdle with virtue the armor of might; Hail! three times hail, to our country and flag!

"Flag" was the unhappy word at the end of every one of the four stanzas. To match a short vowel to an orotund concert note for two beats and a "hold" was impossible. When the great Peace Jubilee of 1872, in Boston, was projected, Dr. Holmes was applied to, and responded with a lyric that gave each stanza the rondeau effect designed by the composer, but replaced the flat final with a climax syllable of breadth and music:

Angel of Peace, thou hast wandered too long! Spread thy white wings to the sunshine of love! Come while our voices are blended in song, Fly to our ark like the storm-beaten dove! Fly to our ark on the wings of the dove, Speed o'er the far-sounding billows of song, Crown'd with thine olive-leaf garland of love, Angel of Peace, thou hast waited too long!

* * * * *

Angels of Bethlehem, answer the strain! Hark! a new birth-song is filling the sky! Loud as the storm-wind that tumbles the main, Bid the full breath of the organ reply, Let the loud tempest of voices reply, Roll its long surge like the earth-shaking main! Swell the vast song till it mounts to the sky! Angels of Bethlehem, echo the strain!

But the glory of the tune was Keller's own.

Soon after the close of the war a prize of $500 had been offered by a committee of American gentlemen for the best "national hymn" (meaning words and music). Mr. Keller, though a foreigner, was a naturalized citizen and patriot and entered the lists as a competitor with the zeal of a native and the ambition of an artist. Sometime in 1866 he finished and copyrighted the noble anthem that bears his name, and then began the struggle to get it before the public and test its merit. To enable him to bring it out before the New York Academy of Music, where (unfortunately) he determined to make his first trial, his brother kindly lent him four hundred dollars (which he had laid by to purchase a little home), and he borrowed two hundred more elsewhere.

The performance proved a failure, the total receipts being only forty-two dollars, Keller was $500 in debt, and his brother's house-money was gone. But he refused to accept his failure as final. Boston (where he should have begun) was introduced to his masterpiece at every opportunity, and gradually, with the help of the city bands and a few public concerts, a decided liking for it was worked up. It was entered on the program of the Peace Jubilee and sung by a chorus of ten thousand voices. The effect was magnificent. "Keller's American Hymn" became a recognized star number in the repertoire of "best" national tunes; and now few public occasions where patriotic music is demanded omit it in their menu of song.

It is pathetic to know that the composer's one great success brought him only a barren renown. The prize committee, on the ground that none of the competing pieces reached the high standard of excellence contemplated, withheld the $500, and Keller's work received merely the compliment of being judged worth presentation. The artist had his copyright, but he remained a poor man.

Matthias Keller was born at Ulm, Wurtemberg, March 20, 1813. In his youth he was both a musician and a painter. Coming to this country, he chose the calling that promised the better and quicker wages, playing in bands and theatre orchestras, but never accumulating money. He could make fine harmonies as well as play them, but English was not his mother-tongue, and though he wrote a hundred and fifty songs, only one made him well-known. When fame came to him it did not bring him wealth, and in his latter days, crippled by partial paralysis, he went back to his early art and earned a living by painting flowers and retouching portraits and landscapes. He died in 1875, only three years after his Coliseum triumph.