gans, the bands and the theater
orchestras everywhere were using it. One could scarcely turn a corner or
go into a cheap music hall or variety house without hearing a parody of
it. It was wonderful, the enormous furore that it seemed to create, and
of course my dear brother was privileged to walk about smiling and
secure, his bank account large, his friends numerous, in the pink of
health, and gloating over the fact that he was a success, well known, a
genuine creator of popular songs.

It was the same with "On the Banks of the Wabash," possibly an even
greater success, for it came eventually to be adopted by his native
State as its State song, and in that region streets and a town were
named after him. In an almost unintentional and unthinking way I had a
hand in that, and it has always cheered me to think that I had, although
I have never had the least talent for musical composition or song
versification. It was one of those delightful summer Sunday mornings
(1896, I believe), when I was still connected with his firm as editor of
the little monthly they were issuing, and he and myself, living with my
sister E----, that we had gone over to this office to do a little work.
I had a number of current magazines I wished to examine; he was always
wishing to compose something, to express that ebullient and emotional
soul of his in some way.

"What do you suppose would make a good song these days?" he asked in an
idle, meditative mood, sitting at the piano and thrumming while I at a
nearby table was looking over my papers. "Why don't you give me an idea
for one once in a while, sport? You ought to be able to suggest
something."

"Me?" I queried, almost contemptuously, I suppose. I could be very lofty
at times in regard to his work, much as I admired him--vain and yet more
or less dependent snip that I was. "I can't write those things. Why
don't you write something about a State or a river? Look at 'My Old
Kentucky Home,' 'Dixie,' 'Old Black Joe'--why don't you do something
like that, something that suggests a part of America? People like that.
Take Indiana--what's the matter with it--the Wabash River? It's as good
as any other river, and you were 'raised' beside it."

I have to smile even now as I recall the apparent zest or feeling with
which all at once he seized on this. It seemed to appeal to him
immensely. "That's not a bad idea," he agreed, "but how would you go
about it? Why don't you write the words and let me put