ABSTRACT
Will any military musician compose an air to this burden? It must, in sooth, be a melancholy strain. strain A heavy enough to fix lead to the feet of marching regiments; a strain wild and melancholy to the very heart-breaking of men, with hearts otherwise fierce and indomitable as the hearts of lions, nerved to do battle for their country. The well-known air, “The Girl I left Behind Me,” that has of late pierced our streets, has in it a sort of gay defiance of sorrow. But if the strain were an echo of the pulsation of the heart, very differently must sound our proposed air to be played by the bands of all regiments bound for foreign warfare, “The Wife I Leave Behind Me.”
