A Western paper in telling its story a year or two ago, stated that Webster took the "Sweet By and By" (in sheet-music form), with a batch of other pieces, to Chicago, and that it was the only song of the lot that Root and Cady would not buy; and finally, after he had tried in vain to sell it, Lyon and Healy took it "out of pity," and paid him twenty dollars. They sold eight or ten copies (the story continued) and stowed it away with dead goods, and it was not till apparently a long time after, when a Sunday-school hymn-book reprinted it, and began to sell rapidly on its account, that the "Sweet By and By" started on its career round the world. This seems circumstantial enough, and the author of the hymn in his own story of it might have chosen to omit some early particulars, but, untrustworthy as the chronology of mere memory is, he would hardly record immediate popularity of a song that lay in obscurity for years. Dr. Bennett's words are, "I think it was used in public shortly after [its production], for within two weeks children on the street were singing it." The explanation may be partly the different method and order of the statements, partly lapses of memory (after thirty years) and partly in collateral facts. The Sunday-school hymn-book was evidently _The Signet Ring_, which Bennett and Webster were at work upon and into which first went the "Sweet By and By"--whatever efforts may have been made to dispose of it elsewhere or whatever copyright arrangement could have warranted Mr. Healy in purchasing a song already printed. The _Signet Ring_ did not begin to profit by the song until the next year, after a copy of it appeared in the publishers' circulars, and started a demand; so that the _immediate_ popularity implied in Doctor Bennett's account was limited to the children of Elkhorn village. The piece had its run, but with no exceptional result as to its hold on the public, until in 1873 Ira D. Sankey took it up as one of his working hymns. Modified from its first form in the "_Signet Ring_" with pianoforte accompaniment and chorus, it appeared that year in _Winnowed Hymns_ as arranged by Hubert P. Main, and it has so been sung ever since. Sanford Filmore Bennett, born in 1836, appears to have been a native of the West, or, at least, removed there when a young man. In 1861 he settled in Elkhorn to practice his profession. Died Oct., 1898. Joseph Philbrick Webster was born in Manchester, N.H. March 22, 1819. He was an active member of the Handel and Haydn Society, and various other musical associations. Removed to Madison, Ind. 1851, Racine, Wis. 1856, and Elkhorn, Wis., 1857, where he died Jan. 18, 1875. His _Signet Ring_ was published in 1868. There's a land that is fairer than day, And by faith I can see it afar For the Father waits over the way To prepare us a dwelling-place there. CHORUS In the sweet by and by We shall meet on that beautiful shore.