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Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
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David H Fears <[log in to unmask]>
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Sat, 23 Sep 2006 18:52:38 EDT
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On the MT music front:

In my research for Mark Twain Day-By-Day, the annotated day-chronology (now
approaching 300 pages and midway into 1870), I have come across two items on
Sam and music that might interest.

First in Samuel Charles Webster's 1947 book, Mark Twain, Business Man, Annie
Moffett Webster, Sam's niece who lived until 1950, wrote a chapter in her
own words, "As His Niece Remembers Him." SC Webster was Annie's son.

Annie wrote this about her uncle:

When I think of Uncle Sam during those early years it is always as a singer.
He would sit at the piano and play and sing by the hour, the same song over
and over: --

There was an old horse
And his name was Jerusalem.
He went to Jerusalem,
He came from Jerusalem.
Ain't I glad I'm out of the wilderness! Oh!  Bang!
He seems to have been flattered by my appreciation of this effort because he
began to call me "Old Horse." It was "Old Horse, get me  that book" or "Old
Horse, run up to my room for a paper."

As I grew a little older it must have struck me that  to be called "Old
Horse" even by Uncle Sam was not suitable. My cousin Jenny Clemens, Uncle
Orion's
daughter, who was visiting us, had also been insulted by  our uncle. He had
taken to calling her "Trundle-bed Trash," a current term for  the extra
children
who had to sleep in little trundle  beds....

Another of Uncle Sam's songs which seems to have struck me as a classic to
be remembered was: --

Samuel Clemens! the gray dawn is breaking,
The howl of the housemaid is heard in the hall;
The cow from the back gate her exit is making,--
What, Sam Clemens? Slumbering  still?
---

The other music item comes from 1869. Here is my entry from my WIP:

March 25th  Thursday  Sam wrote in Livy's copy of Autocrat
of the Breakfast-Table,  Midnight March 25, 1869 I wish 'Even Me' to be sung
at my funeral.
The song  was a hymn composed by William B. Bradbury in 1862. Sam claimed it
his favorite  in a March 31st letter to Livy's sister.[1c,  p184n9]

(The sister was the adopted Susan  Crane.)

David H Fears

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