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"As an old friend," says Mr. Cleveland, "it is a great pleasure to congratulate you on your coming birth-day, which marks so many years of usefulness and duty. I am rejoiced to know that your character and work are amply appreciated by good, kind friends, who stand about you in your advancing years to cheer and comfort you. I remember our association fifty years ago; and it gratifies me to say that you, who have brought cheer and comfort to so many in the past, richly deserve now the greatest amount of grateful acknowledgement, and all the rich recompense, which the love of friends and the approval of God can supply."

When plans were being made to celebrate my eighty-fifth birthday in March, 1905, Mr. Cleveland wrote another beautiful letter, the text of which follows:

"My dear friend:

"It is more than fifty years ago that our acquaintance and friendship began; and ever since that tune I have watched your continuous and disinterested labor in uplifting humanity, and pointing out the way to an appreciation of God's goodness and mercy.

"Though these labors have, I know, brought you abundant rewards in your consciousness of good accom-plished, those who have known of your works and sym-pathized with your noble purposes owe it to themselves that you are apprized of their remembrance of these things. I am, therefore, exceedingly gratified to learn that your eighty-fifth birthday is to be celebrated with a demonstration of this remembrance. As one proud to call you an old friend, I desire to be early in congratulating you on your long life of usefulness, and wishing you in the years yet to be added to you, the peace and comfort born of the love of God.

"Yours very sincerely,
"Grover Cleveland."

These letters from my friend I prize among my most valued treasures; and of all the great men in public life; whom I have had the good fortune to know, I consider him to be one of the greatest; and in my affection and esteem he holds a place that no other statesman could possibly occupy.

CHAPTER XIV
EARLY SONGS AND HYMNS

IN 1845 Mr. George F. Root began to give in-struction in music at the Institution; already he was well known as the composer of many sweet hymns and various secular pieces that were exceedingly popular. He used to play many of his melodies for me; and frequently asked me to write words for them. One day in 1851 he played an air that was wonderfully sweet and touching; and I exclaimed.

"Oh, Mr. Root, why don't you publish that?"

"I have no words for it," he replied, "and cannot purchase any." I suggested that he let me try to write something; he assented; and I composed a song be-ginning as follows:

"O come to the greenwood, where nature is smiling,
Come to the greenwood, so lovely and gay,
There will soft music thy spirit beguiling
Tenderly carol thy sadness away."

Our first joint composition was a song, entitled "Fare Thee Well, Kitty Dear," which described the grief of a colored man on the death of his beloved; and the chorus runs like this,

"Fare thee well, Kitty dear,
Thou art sleeping in thy grave so low,
Nevermore, Kitty dear,
Wilt thou listen to my old banjo."

During the next three years we composed fifty or sixty songs, some of the titles of which are "Bird of the North," "Hazel Dell," "They Have Sold Me Down the River," "O How Glad to Get Home," "Rosalie the Prairie Flower" and "There's Music in the Air."

The success of the concerts given by William B. Bradbury at the Broadway Tabernacle inspired Mr. Root to attempt something in the same manner; and accord-ingly in 1853 we wrote "The Flower Queen," a cantata, the story of which is as follows: an old man becoming tired of the world, decides to become a hermit; but, as he is about to retire to his lonely hut, he hears a chorus singing, "Who shall be queen of the flowers?" His interest is at once aroused; and on the following day he is asked to act as judge in a contest where each flower urges her claims to be queen of all the others. At length the hermit chooses the rose for her loveliness; and in turn she exhorts him to return to the world and to his duty.

I believe that "The Flower Queen" was the first American cantata; and it was immediately in great demand. It was followed by the "Pilgrim Fathers," for which Dr. Lowell Mason assisted in composing the music.

On March 2, 1858, I left the New York Institution for the Blind; and my parting from those familiar sur-roundings was indeed sad; for I had been there nearly twenty-three years, eight as a pupil, and fifteen as a teacher. Prior to this I had written no hymns, except possibly one or two short religious poems that may have been set to music; but I had been engaged in writing verses and short prose sketches for several papers. The best of my work had been collected into three books, although the great bulk of personal and miscellaneous pieces were never gathered together; and I am indeed glad that they were not. The third book of poems was compiled a few months after I left the Institution, under the title of "A Wreath of Columbia's Flowers"; and it suffered more than the others from the need of careful pruning and revision.