There was another stanza, but this is quite enough, which is what Julius Benedict and Jenny Lind thought, for only those two stanzas were set to music and sung. Bayard Taylor himself was not proud of his effort. Both he and Richard Henry Stoddard, his best friend, competed for the prize, because they both needed the $200. Taylor wrote to a friend that his “only inspiration was the hope of getting the two hundred dollars,” and the protests of the other competitors, coupled with the knowledge that he had not written a good poem, made him regret that he had ever yielded to temptation. He was worried about the effect of the poem upon his reputation, and he told Stoddard before the protests of the other competitors that he anticipated them because two of the judges were his friends. Two months after the prize was announced he wrote to Stoddard: “Did you see the Brooklyn announcement of my lecture? (‘Bayard Taylor, the successful competitor of the Jenny Lind prize.’) Is that song to be the only thing which will save my name from oblivion?” It was not necessary for him to worry: his translation of Goethe’s _Faust_ has outlived the “Welcome to America.” William Allen Butler, author of “Nothing to Wear,” wrote a book of parodies which went into three editions, called _Barnum’s Parnassus_, purporting to be confidential disclosures of the Jenny Lind Prize Committee. The following is the most interesting poem in the book: A VOLUNTEER ODE By the ‘Acknowledged Best Song Writer’--Not a Competitor I “Ho! all ye bards, from best to worst, In village, town or city; Hand in your Songs before the 1st To Barnum’s Prize Committee! “Ho! every charming poetess Pick out your choicest ditty, And send it on, post-paid--express-- To Barnum’s Prize Committee! * * * * * IV “$200, cash! My eyes! In _cash_, two hundred dollars! Why, in the good old centuries Your Spensers and your Wallers, And those Elizabethan gents, In ruffs, and beards and bonnets, Were glad to get as many _pence_ For one of their short sonnets!” * * * * * The protesting poetical voices pleased Barnum immensely. He had offered his $200 for a prize ode, and he received as well several hundred letters of indignation written to the newspapers, a book of parodies, in every one of which his name was mentioned several times, and a reputation for generosity to poor literary men, who were also newspaper men.