trains, some
of which he jotted down, others of which, having mastered, he strove to
fit words to. At such times he preferred to be alone or with some one
whose temperament in no way clashed but rather harmonized with his own.
Living with one of my sisters for a period of years, he had a room
specially fitted up for his composing work, a very small room for so
very large a man, within which he would shut himself and thrum a melody
by the hour, especially toward evening or at night. He seemed to have a
peculiar fondness for the twilight hour, and at this time might thrum
over one strain and another until over some particular one, a new song
usually, he would be in tears!

And what pale little things they were really, mere bits and scraps of
sentiment and melodrama in story form, most asinine sighings over home
and mother and lost sweethearts and dead heroes such as never were in
real life, and yet with something about them, in the music at least,
which always appealed to me intensely and must have appealed to others,
since they attained so wide a circulation. They bespoke, as I always
felt, a wistful, seeking, uncertain temperament, tender and illusioned,
with no practical knowledge of any side of life, but full of a true
poetic feeling for the mystery and pathos of life and death, the wonder
of the waters, the stars, the flowers, accidents of life, success,
failure. Beginning with a song called "Wide Wings" (published by a small
retail music-house in Evansville, Indiana), and followed by such
national successes as "The Letter That Never Came," "I Believe It, For
My Mother Told Me So" (!), "The Convict and the Bird," "The Pardon Came
Too Late," "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," "The Blue and the Grey,"
"On the Bowery," "On the Banks of the Wabash," and a number of others,
he was never content to rest and never really happy, I think, save when
composing. During this time, however, he was at different periods all
the things I have described--a black-face monologue artist, an end- and
at times a middle-man, a publisher, and so on.

I recall being with him at the time he composed two of his most famous
successes: "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," and "On the Banks of the
Wabash," and noting his peculiar mood, almost amounting to a deep
depression which ended a little later in marked elation or satisfaction,
once he had succeeded in evoking something which really pleased him.

The first of these songs must have followed an