SOJIL PAGES TRO Pl PIT SCRAP ROOK
DYING WITH A SONG ON HIS LIPS.
The Fate of Nicholls Crouch, Author
of “Kathleen Mavourneen.”
Baltimore, March 25. —Tn an humble
house on a retired street in this city
an old man is dying, whose life is
a romance from its first chapter to
its fast approaching end. They say—
those who watch him —that at times
in his illness his mind wanders and
he hums and thrums the old songs.
There is infinite sadness in this, for
the songs this old man sings are the
songs he wrote years ago; songs which
men and women on every continent
have sung and will sing, doubtless,
for decades to come.
The song which the dying old man
repeats most often is “Kathleen Mav
oureen,” and the singer and the au
thor is Frederick Nicholls Crouch. It
is not extravagant praise to class
him as a genius. He is 84 now, and
the world has forgotten him; but at
50 he was in the prime of a career
which had been continuously honora
ble and notable, and which bade fair
to bring forth even better triumphs.
In those days Professor Nicholls
Crouch was one of the famous musi
cians and composers of the world.
Twenty years later, by a strange suc
cession of vicissitudes, he had fallen
into obscurity and poverty, and was a
day laborer at wages hardly sufficient
to feed his numerous family.
His Strange Daughter.
