“THERE'S A LAND THAT IS FAIRER THAN DAY.”
This belongs rather with “Christian Ballads” than with genuine hymns, but the song has had and still has an uplifting mission among the lowly whom literary perfection and musical nicety could not touch—and the first two lines, at least, are good hymn-writing. Few of the best sacred lyrics have been sung with purer sentiment and more affectionate fervor than “The Sweet By-and-By.” To any company keyed to sympathy by time, place, 601 / 535 and condition, the feeling of the song brings unshed tears.
As nearly as can be ascertained it was in the year 1867 that a man about forty-eight years old, named Webster, entered the office of Dr. Bennett in Elkhorn. Wis., wearing a melancholy look, and was rallied good-naturedly by the doctor for being so blue—Webster and Bennett were friends, and the doctor was familiar with the other's frequent fits of gloom.
The two men had been working in a sort of partnership, Webster being a musician and Bennett a ready verse-writer, and together they had created and published a number of sheet-music songs. When Webster was in a fit of melancholy, it was the doctor's habit to give him a “dose” of new verses and cure him by putting him to work. Today the treatment turned out to be historic.
“What's the matter now,” was the doctor's greeting when his “patient” came with the tell-tale face.
“O, nothing,” said Webster. “It'll be all right by and by.”
“Why not make a song of the sweet by and by?” rejoined the doctor, cheerfully.
“I don't know,” said Webster, after thinking a second or two. “If you'll make the words, I'll write the music.”
The doctor went to his desk, and in a short time produced three stanzas and a chorus to which his friend soon set the notes of a lilting air, brightening up with enthusiasm as he wrote. Seizing his 602 / 536 violin, which he had with him, he played the melody, and in a few minutes more he had filled in the counterpoint and made a complete hymn-tune. By that time two other friends, who could sing, had come in and the quartette tested the music on the spot. Here different accounts divide widely as to the immediate sequel of the new-born song.
A Western paper in telling its story a year or two ago, stated that Webster took the “Sweet By and By” (in sheet-music form), with a batch of other pieces, to Chicago, and that it was the only song of the lot that Root and Cady would not buy; and finally, after he had tried in vain to sell it, Lyon and Healy took it “out of pity,” and paid him twenty dollars. They sold eight or ten copies (the story continued) and stowed it away with dead goods, and it was not till apparently a long time after, when a Sunday-school hymn-book reprinted it, and began to sell rapidly on its account, that the “Sweet By and By” started on its career round the world.
This seems circumstantial enough, and the author of the hymn in his own story of it might have chosen to omit some early particulars, but, untrustworthy as the chronology of mere memory is, he would hardly record immediate popularity of a song that lay in obscurity for years. Dr. Bennett's words are, “I think it was used in public shortly after [its production], for within two weeks children on the street were singing it.”
The explanation may be partly the different method and order of the statements, partly lapses of memory (after thirty years) and partly in collateral facts. The Sunday-school hymn-book was evidently The Signet Ring, which Bennett and Webster were at work upon and into which first went the “Sweet By and By”—whatever efforts may have been made to dispose of it elsewhere or whatever copyright arrangement could have warranted Mr. Healy in purchasing a song already printed. The Signet Ring did not begin to profit by the song until the next year, after a copy of it appeared in the publishers' circulars, and started a demand; so that the immediate popularity implied in Doctor Bennett's account was limited to the children of Elkhorn village.
The piece had its run, but with no exceptional result as to its hold on the public, until in 1873 Ira D. Sankey took it up as one of his working hymns. Modified from its first form in the “Signet Ring” with pianoforte accompaniment and chorus, it appeared that year in Winnowed Hymns as arranged by Hubert P. Main, and it has so been sung ever since.
Sanford Filmore Bennett, born in 1836, appears to have been a native of the West, or, at least, removed there when a young man. In 1861 he settled in Elkhorn to practice his profession. Died Oct., 1898.
Joseph Philbrick Webster was born in Manchester, N.H. March 22, 1819. He was an active 604 / 538 member of the Handel and Haydn Society, and various other musical associations. Removed to Madison, Ind. 1851, Racine, Wis. 1856, and Elkhorn, Wis., 1857, where he died Jan. 18, 1875. His Signet Ring was published in 1868.
There's a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith I can see it afar
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling-place there.
Chorus
In the sweet by and by
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.
We shall sing on that beautiful shore
The melodious songs of the blest,
And our spirits shall sorrow no more,
Nor sigh for the blessing of rest.
In the sweet by and by, etc.