Songs from the Smoke

Copyright by N. S. Wooldridge
THE CITY BEYOND
FROM THE PRIZE PICTURE OF MR. NORMAN S. WOOLDRIDGE, WITH HIS PERMISSION
BY MADELEINE SWEENY MILLER (VASSAR COLLEGE, A.B.)
INTRODUCTION BY SIMON N. PATTEN, Ph.D., LL.D.
ILLUSTRATED
THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN NEW YORK CINCINNATI
Copyright, 1914, by MADELEINE SWEENY MILLER
TO THOSE WHO HAVE MADE IT POSSIBLE THIS BOOK IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED. E. B. S. G. B. S. J. L. M.


A Pittsburgh musician whose fame as a composer is widely established confessed to me recently that he had been for years trying to catch the spirit of the Steel City with a view of representing it in music, but up to the present time had failed to grasp anything tangible enough for expression. This failure on his part, however, and on the part of all musicians, by no means proves the absence of a very real genius loci . Pittsburgh has a very vivid personality. Mr. John Alexander succeeded in holding the elusive spirit captive long enough to put her image on canvas in his remarkable friezes in the Carnegie Library, portraying the ranks of labor, and now in this volume of verse I offer to the people at large the songs I have found in the various moods of the smoke. “Songs for the Brothers Who Toil” have come in moments spent watching the giant stacks along the river fronts breathe forth their mighty energy; “Songs for the Evening Hour” were born when the breeze from the hills lifted and shifted the smoke, bringing lyric reveries of voices from the silent battlefield, and embers from the burning town; and following the changing tides of years, “Songs for the Seasons” have come.