Among these letters comes one from Young E. Allison which is entitled to serious consideration. Mr. Allison is a gentleman of the first order of character and culture, an editor and a musician, and what he writes cannot fail to carry with it very great weight. I need make no apology for quoting him at length.
"I have long been collecting material about Foster from his birth to his death," says Mr. Allison, "and aside from his weak and fatal love of drink, which developed after he was twenty-five, and had married, his life was one continuous devotion to the study of music, of painting, of poetry and of languages; in point of fact, of all the arts that appeal to one who feels within him the stir of the creative. He was, quite singularly enough, a fine mathematician, which undoubtedly aided him in the study of music as a science, to which time and balance play such an important part. In fact, I believe it was the mathematical devil in his brain that came to hold him within such bare and primitive forms of composition and so, to some extent, to delimit the wider development of his genius.
"Now as to Foster's drinking habits, however unfortunate they proved to him they did not affect the quality of his art as he bequeathed it to us. No one cares to recall the unhappy fortunes of Burns, De Musset, Chopin or--even in our own time--of O. Henry, and others who might be named. In none of their productions does the hectic fever of over-stimulation show itself. No purer, gentler or simpler aspirations were ever expressed in the varying forms of music and verse than flowed from Foster's pen, even as penetrating benevolence came from the pen of O. Henry, embittered and solitary as his life had been. Indeed when we come to regard what the drinkers of history have done for the world in spite of the artificial stimulus they craved, we may say with Lincoln as Lincoln said of Grant, 'Send the other generals some of the same brand.'
"Foster was an aristocrat of aristocrats, both by birth and gifts. He inherited the blood of Richard Steele and of the Kemble family, noted in English letters and dramatic annals. To these artistic strains he added undoubtedly the musical temperament of an Italian grandmother or great-grand-mother. He was a cousin of John Rowan, the distinguished Kentucky lawyer and senator. Of Foster's family, his father, his brothers, his sisters were all notable as patriots, as pioneers in engineering, in commerce and in society. One of his brothers designed and built the early Pennsylvania Railroad system and died executive vice-president of that great corporation. Thus he was born to the arts and to social distinction. But, like many men of the creative temperament, he was born a solitary, destined to live in a land of dreams. The singular beauty and grace of his person and countenance, the charm of his voice, manner and conversation, were for the most part familiar to the limited circle of his immediate family and friends. To others he was reticent, with a certain hauteur of timidity, avoiding society and public appearances to the day of his death.