Emmett is still living and resides at Mount Vernon, Ohio, where he hopes to end his days. The old man is a picturesque figure on the streets. In his prime he was one of the mid-century dandies of New York City, but now, with calm indifference to the conventional, he usually carries a long staff and wears his coat fastened in at the waist by a bit of rope. His home is a little cottage on the edge of town, where he lives entirely alone. On almost any warm afternoon he can be found seated before his door reading, but he is ready enough to talk with the chance visitor whose curiosity to meet the composer of one of the National Songs of America, has brought him thither. A newspaper man who recently went to talk with the old minstrel found him seated in the shade by his house with a book open before him. As he went up the path, he said, for he had some doubt in his own mind,-- "Are you Dan Emmett, who wrote _Dixie_?" "Well, I have heard of the fellow; sit down," and Emmett motioned to the steps. "Won't you tell me how the song was written?" "Like most everything else I ever did," said Emmett, "it was written because it had to be done. One Saturday night, in 1859, as I was leaving Bryant's Theater, where I was playing, Bryant called after me, 'I want a walk-'round for Monday, Dan.' "The next day it rained and I stayed indoors. At first when I went at the song I couldn't get anything. But a line, 'I wish I was in Dixie,' kept repeating itself in my mind, and I finally took it for my start. The rest wasn't long in coming. And that's the story of how _Dixie_ was written. "It made a hit at once, and before the end of the week everybody in New York was whistling it. Then the South took it up and claimed it for its own. I sold the copyright for five hundred dollars, which was all I ever made from it. I'll show you my first copy." He went into the house and returned in a moment with a yellow, worn-looking manuscript in his hand. "That's _Dixie_," he said, holding it up for inspection. "I am going to give it to some historical society in the South, one of these days, for though I was born here in Ohio, I count myself a Southerner, as my father was a Virginian." _Dixie Land_ was without question the most famous of all the Southern war songs. But it was the tune, as in the case of _Yankee Doodle_, and not the words that gave it its great power to fire the heart. It is claimed that Emmett appropriated the tune from an old negro air, which is quite probable.