2

Preface.

Ten months have now passed since we set forth to complete the Third Edition of this little Songster without the music. After its first appearance in the Social Circles of our great common people, the demand steadily increased to such an extent, that much of the time it has been beyond our facilities to meet. Over forty-thousand copies are now in constant use from coast to coast of our broad land.

Now, since its endorsement by the official bodies of the several great Labor organizations, we feel warranted in catering to the public wish by revising, and setting to music, as well as adding new pieces. It is with no slight degree of pleasure that we picture the thousands of people now singing their own songs, in the spirit of their own labors, and in their own societies.

Our poets have rhymed for the beautiful and wealthy, the authors have exhausted their skill to tickle the fancy of those who dwell in luxury and opulence. Our ministers have preached and prayed for the souls of men (too often after the pockets of the influential), and let the bodies go; but the single-handed farmer, mechanic, and day-laborer, has had to sing another's song, — if, by chance, he felt like singing at all after "duties" were done — or go without that music all men love, and nature craves.

It is far you we have issued this little SONGSTER, with a sincere desire that by its use your labors may be made more congenial, and with a hope that a condition may be ushered in, where the husbandman may in truth come home from his labors with song on his lips, and be met by the sweet sound of wife singing "Home, Sweet Home," in — not a tenement house — but their home indeed.

To those who have kindly shown such an interest to contribute choice pieces, we say, thank you. May this little book ever be a means of pleasure to all, and may the harmonizing influence of music have the effect of sealing the sympathies of our people till political strife shall be of the past, is the wish of
THE COMPILER.