“Way down upon de Suanee river,
Far, far away.
Dah’s whar my heart am turning ebber,
Dah’s whar de ole folks stay.”
Foster surely knew what it was to be homesick when he wrote those lines.
He knew the heart-aches of a homesick boy. What difference whether the
homesick boy is white or black? The heart-aches are just the same; the
longings just as sad, the memories just as sweet, the absent parents
just as sacred, the absent brothers and sisters just as dear. That song
makes the greatest appeal to human hearts for sympathy of any song ever
sung—sympathy for the black or white boy obliged to go away from home and
leave those he loves best on earth.
In my mind’s eye I see Foster’s little black boy who is sold into slavery
and driven far away from the banks of the Suanee river to the cotton
fields of the Southwest. Perhaps not one soul in all the world, besides
his mother and little brothers, ever gave the poor slave boy a single
thought after he was driven out of sight of the old cabin home. Other
boys going away from home—white boys of those days, had all the world
before them; but the poor slave boy had only his chains and his broken
heart.
I see him lying in his hard bed of straw at night, with the storms
howling around the cabin and the fading fire sending out only a few
feeble rays of light—I see the homesick lad lying with his face buried in
his hands and threading the old paths that lead up to his mother’s cabin
through his mind. He sees the dear old river and the wild fowls resting
on the bosom of the water. He sees his dear old mother sleeping in the
old familiar bed where he lay when a baby. He sees his younger brother
sleeping on the bed of straw near the hearth, his black face turned up
for the moon beams to write lines of tenderness and love on each well
remembered cheek. Outside the humble door the shaggy watchdog watches
over the family that owns nothing but their wrongs.
And, with my mind on that homesick boy, I hear him sobbing, while the
coarse sleeve of his soiled shirt absorbs the bitter tears that are
known only to the great God who has commanded every one to love his
neighbor as himself. In his ears the hum of the bees is still heard, and
the music of his father’s banjo comes back on the wings of memory, like
the odor of funeral-smelling flowers coming back from the grave of his
buried hopes. The darkie boy at his saddest best.
The homesick boy of Foster’s song is not the bad nigger, full of nigger
gin and hatred and evil intentions. The slave boy in whom you see only
centuries of wrongs and oppressions is the picture in Foster’s immortal
song.
Oh, the world would be better if every one had experienced a season of
homesick longings, and cried themselves to sleep with the image of absent
loved ones painted on their mind with the brush of tenderness. Better if
all had wrongs to remember, and oppressions to leave scars on their souls
that would make them feel kinship towards all the unfortunate who must
suffer and bear their burdens alone.
It is a well known sociological fact that those who suffer hardships
and privations have more tender feelings for the poor and unfortunate,
than those who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and never
intermingled with the people of the lower world. Of course, there are
exceptions, but they are few. When you find a wealthy person who feels
charitable and kind towards all the world, that person has suffered
heart-aches, too. He wants the sympathy of those who have suffered like
he has. There is a fraternal feeling in his heart for the unfortunate,
planted there by his own heart-aches and watered with his own tears. A
man who has never known a heart-ache, never gives a single thought to the
homesick boy who longed for his Suanee river home.