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STORIES OF
Will Rise" in 1804, and " The Americans" in 1806, after the death of the great Nelson, which, as every schoolboy knows, occurred in October, 1805, on board the "Victory." S. J. Arnold, who also wrote " Speed on my Bark," " The Parent Oak," and other lyrics, seemed to be very fond of sea subjects. He also appears to have been a very clever writer and portrait painter as well. He furnished surprising speci-mens (of portrait painting) at the Royal Acad-emy; he afterwards undertook a panorama of the battle of Alexandria, exhibited in 1801. " He seems, indeed, to possess an universal genius," says a writer in 1807. He married Miss Pye, daughter of H. J. Pye the unpoetic poet laureate.
It would not be difficult to cite a number of instances of a song that has been sold for " a mere song," as the phrase is, that has after-wards brought in thousands of pounds. F o r example, in 1859 Mr. Stephen C. Foster was in a piano store-room in Broadway, New York, where, in the presence of a few gentlemen, he played his charming song, " C o m e where my love lies dreaming." At the conclusion he sold the song for five dollars—or say a guinea. Mr. J. C. Cussans, who told this story at a city ban-quet in 1892, was present when the song was
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