The Dead Men’s Song:

Being the
Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch
of Its Author

YOUNG EWING ALLISON

Together with a Browse Through Other
Gems of His and Recollections
of Older Days

by

His Friend and Associate

CHAMPION INGRAHAM HITCHCOCK

Incorporated with which are Facsimiles of Certain Interesting Manuscripts

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

1914

copyright by
Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

1914

IN THESE PAGES

A Word Said Beforehand

Explaining How a Certain “Chap” Lost His Temper and Found It Again Very Quickly.

Derelict, By Young Ewing Allison

A Reminiscence of Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” Based On the Quatrain of Captain Billy Bones.

Picturing the Individual

With Some Observations About A Man Whom I Have the Honor to Call Friend.

Man and Newspaper Man

A Peep Into Personal Records of the Past With Some Comments of a Current Nature.

Just Browsing Around

Excursions Into the “Higher Altitudes” With Something About the Books Up There.

In the Operatic Field

Being a Look Behind the Scenes With Some Glimpses of a Pursuing Jinx.

Ballad of Dead Men

The Same Being Mostly About Able Pirates And the Very Able Descendant of a Pirate.

If There Is Controversy!

Just a Few Bits From the Olden Days With Some Comment On a Certain Critic.

Some Clippings—And a Letter

Which Tells How One Who Did Not Know Set Himself Up As a “Chanty” Authority.

Yo-Ho-Ho And A Bottle Of Rum

Discussed As a Chanty Entertainingly By a Mariner and With a Deep-Sea Flavor.

SUPPLEMENTING the TEXT

Young Ewing Allison (By Cusick)Frontispiece.

A “Sitting” for Which Photograph Forms A Story Known Only to This Writer.

Derelict Illuminating the Poem

Facsimiles of the Original Illustrations in Rubric (Vol. 1, No. 1, 1901) to Which Certain Piratical Tints Have Been Added.

“A Tempting Bauble”

Said “Bauble” Being a Check (to Cover the Cost of a Certain Book) Which Allison Returned in a Frame With a Few Comments of His Own.

Young E. Allison (By Wyncie King)

Louisville Herald Demon Caricaturist’s Conception of a Pirate’s Poet, With a Cigarette Replacing the Customary “Stogie.”

The Infallible (By Charles Dana Gibson)

A “Type” in Every Old Daily Newspaper Office, Reproduced from Century (October, 1889), Illustrating “The Longworth Mystery.”

Book of “The Ogallallas”

Being a Facsimile (Slightly Reduced) of the Cover of Allison’s First Opera Pursued and Captured By a Jinx.

From The Old “Prompt” Book

Page (slightly reduced) From “The Mouse and the Garter,” Showing Allison’s Characteristic Penciled Notations.

“A Piratical Ballad” (Words And Music)

Facsimile in Miniature of the First Printed Verses of “Derelict” Published and Copyrighted by William A. Pond & Co., 1891.

Together With Certain Letters and Memoranda, Proofs, Mss., etc., About “Fifteen Dead Men,” in Facsimile of Young E. Allison’s Characteristic Handwriting, which are to be Found in a “Pocket” in the Inside Back Cover of This Volume.

A WORD SAID BEFOREHAND

If a careless and uninformed writer in The New York Times Book Review had not hazarded the speculation in his columns that it was very doubtful if Young Ewing Allison wrote the famous poem “Fifteen Men on the Dead Man’s Chest,” the creation and perfection of which took him through a period of about six years, the idea of undertaking a sketch of him and the stuff he has done might