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The Dead Men's Song: Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its Author Young Ewing AllisonHitchcock, Champion Ingraham

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The Dead Men's Song: Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its Author Young Ewing Allison

Name: The Dead Men's Song: Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its Author Young Ewing Allison
Author: Hitchcock, Champion Ingraham

Hitchcock, Champion Ingraham

Allison, Young Ewing, 1853-1932; Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894. Treasure Island; Treasure Island (Imaginary place)

"Some of the fellows we knew in the C. S. A. have had queer luck in
    the shuffle, Kilgore. You remember Knowles of Georgia? I found him
    keeping bar in Sacramento. Young of North Carolina, who led that
    charge at Fredericksburg, is running a restaurant in Colorado; and
    Thomas, of Tennessee--by the Lord Harry, he killed himself with
    drink working in a mine in Arizona--had the jim-jams seven times
    they say and thought his head was a rabbit's nest. Last time I saw
    you riled, Kilgore, was that night in the trenches at
    Fredericksburg when Nelson hid your tobacco bag. You wanted to
    fight him, by the Lord Harry, there and then, but he wouldn't do
    it--because he said he would rather kill Yankees than gentlemen.
    And you both agreed to take your chances next day on a fool trial
    which would fight the Yankees best!"

    [1] Century, October, 1889.

    [2] Lippincott's January, 1892.

Only one who knows Allison intimately can measure the delight, expressed in
chuckles of joy, with which he marked this passage in _Lippincott's_ and
mailed copies to the friends he had whimsically pilloried.

       *       *       *       *       *

When one browses around among Allison's productions he runs across many odd
conceits as in "The Ballad of Whiskey Straight" which he declares was
"prepared according to the provisions of the Pure Food Law, approved 1906."
Whatever quarrel one might have with the subject itself, or the sentiment,
he cannot fail to fall a victim to the soft cadences of the rippling rhyme.


  THE BALLAD OF WHISKEY STRAIGHT.

                I

          Let dreamers whine
          Of the pleasures of wine
      For lovers of soft delight;
          But this is the song
          Of a tipple that's strong--
      For men who must toil and fight.
          Now the drink of luck
          For the man full of pluck
      Is easy to nominate:
          It's the good old whiskey of old Kentuck,
          And you always drink it straight.

                II

          A julep's tang
          Will diminish the pang
      Of an old man's dream of yore,
          When meadows were green
          And the brook flowed between
      The hills he will climb no more;
          But the drink of luck
          For the youth of good pluck,
      Who can stare in the eye of fate,
          Is the good old whiskey of old Kentuck
          And invariably straight.

                III

          So here's to the corn
          That is growing this morn
      All tasselled and gold and gay!
          And the old copper still
          In the sour mash mill
      By the spring on the turnpike gray!
          May the fount of luck
          For the man full of pluck
      Flow ever without abate
          With the good old whiskey of old Kentuck,
          And strong and pure and straight.

                 ENVOY

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Dead Men's Song: Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its Author Young Ewing Allison

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