Y. E. A. AND A BOTTLE OF RUM
LIVING to-day in Louisville, Kentucky, is an elderly gentleman, with a white mustache and a droll eye, slightly deaf and soft-spoken, who some day will be just such a subject for gossip as are Goldsmith, Charles Lamb and Eugene Field. Not perhaps for the masses; but certainly for the members of that inner circle who appreciate the finer flowerings of letters, the permanent contribution rather than the ephemeral success. I can not better introduce him than by re-telling the story of a famous controversy.
In the early fall of the year 1914, a considerable dispute arose concerning the authorship of a poem. In the mèlée of words, Walt Mason justified his existence, Champion I. Hitchcock produced an unique volume, and the New York Times made a gaudy spectacle of itself. The poem was that delightful piece of rhythmic devilry which will instantly be recalled by its opening lines:
Fifteen men on the dead man's chest,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
A correspondent wrote to the Times, requesting the poem; another correspondent furnished
