[42-1] The name painter is a corruption of panther, and is applied in the United States to the cougar or American lion.
AMERICA
By Samuel Francis Smith
Note.—This poem, which is now considered by many to be the great national hymn of the United States, was sung first at a Fourth of July celebration for children in the Park Street Church, Boston.
The author was born in Boston in 1808, and graduated from Harvard University in the same class with Oliver Wendell Holmes. When Smith wrote America he was a student in the Andover Theological Seminary. Many years after they had left college, Dr. Holmes at a reunion of his class read his famous poem The Boys. In it he alludes to Samuel Francis Smith as follows:
“He chanted a song for the brave and the free;
Just read on his medal ‘My country, of thee.’”