Famous Single Poems
recite as it would be to substantiate Irvine Dungan’s description of that literary evening at the Jackson county courthouse in 1867. Of course he might have recited the original and followed it with his parody, and his auditors might have jumped to the conclusion that he wrote both of them, but all this is shrouded in the mists of three decades—to say nothing of the potations which no doubt accompanied the banquet.
In the volume of Ben King’s collected poems published shortly after his death, there is an introduction by John McGovern which gives an admirable picture of the man.
“He began,” writes Mr. McGovern, “as the expositor of ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ on the piano, where each accented note was flat or sharp, and the music flowed rapidly, or over great difficulties, as the score might determine. He arose, and looking half-witted, recited with unapproachable modesty the stammering delight which he would feel ‘If He Could Be by Her.’ He frowsled his hair and became Paderewski, who forthwith fell upon the piano tooth and nail, tore up the track, derailed the symphony, went downstairs and shook the furnace, fainted at the pedals, and was carried out rigid by supers—the greatest pianist of any age.
“He wrote ‘If I Should Die To-night’—a
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