Excerpt from Advent Songs: A Revision of Old Hymns to Meet Modern Needs In the beginning I tried to write a song with a universal appeal. After many attempts I gave up this aim as an impos sible ideal. The attempt to arouse the many diverse human emotions by one group of words, or by one tune, fails almost inevitably to touch any deep emotion. It is at best a mere skimming of the surface, not an expression of real feeling. I then tried a more Simple plan - that Of appealing to individual emotions and to local sentiments. Out of this came the pur pose On which this collection of songs is based - not the writ ing Of a national song, but the devising Of a series of songs, each having a particular and limited appeal. Instead Of one American, are there not many Americans, each Of whose lives needs expression? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.