Saturday stop and think

I've had the Stephen Foster song, Hard Times Come Again No More rattling around in my head these last few days. Foster wrote it in 1854 in reaction to a string of personal setbacks he lived through. There's something about a line the chorus that's always appealed to me, "Many days you have lingered around my cabin door/ oh hard times come again no more." It conjures such an image for me. Anyhow, if you're not familiar with that song here are the lyrics. It could have been written yesterday morning when the Dow dropped below 8000 for the first time in I don't know how many years.

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,

While we all sup sorrow with the poor;

There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;

Oh Hard times come again no more.

Chorus:

Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,

Hard Times, hard times, come again no more

Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;

Oh hard times come again no more.

There's a song, the sigh of the weary,

Hard Times, hard times, come again no more

Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;

Oh hard times come again no more.

(Chorus)

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,

There are frail forms fainting at the door;

Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say

Oh hard times come again no more.

(Chorus)

There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,

With a worn heart whose better days are o'er:

Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day,

Oh hard times come again no more.

(Chorus)

Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,

Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore

Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave

Oh hard times come again no more.

(Chorus)

And here's what it sounds like. 

People have lived through far worse than what's going on today. We'll get through it and be better off for having done so.