What My Lover Said
written and published some fairly creditable verse. Nobody, apparently, thought of writing to the Evening Post to find out who the author really was, nor did any one on the Post think it worth while to relate the true history of the poem. So for five years, the fable went merrily on without effective contradiction.
But on Sunday, October 31, 1880, the Philadelphia Times published a story which was destined to be the starting point of a famous controversy. This story, which was in the shape of special correspondence from New York, gave an account of an informal gathering of actors and newspapermen in “the Palette Club beer-rooms on Twenty-second Street,” in the course of which Barton Hill, the actor, had recited a lovely poem entitled “What My Lover Said,” with such effect that “when he had finished, there seemed to be a finer sentiment pervading the crowd, and the next order for beer was in lower and less authoritative tones.”
Questioned about the poem, Mr. Hill stated that it had been written by Horace Greeley, and had been given him by a friend who had clipped it from the New York Evening Post twenty-five years previously. Some surprise was expressed that Greeley should have written anything so exquisite, and Mr. Hill explained that all he knew about it was the Post had credited it to Greeley. He added that he had endeavored
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