A POPULAR SONG-WRITER.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3226, 1 November 1881, Page 4

A POPULAR SONG-WRITER.

"Will S.. Hays, of Louisville, has made a small fortune by writing songs. Among his popular compositions are ' Mollie. darling,' • Norah O' x eal/ and * Evangeline.' But. he got no money from the latter, though it gave him a start in his business. 'Just before the -war,' he says, ' I was with some young visitors up in Oldham County, Kentucky. Among them "was a beautiful young girl who resembled the ideal pictures of Longfellow's "Evangeline" so closely that I called her by that name. We danced at an outdoor frolic one evening and soon discovered that four of us could sing together. We tried popular quartettes, and got along so well that we became enthusiastic. About 2 o'clock in the morning we started to "walk home. The night was as bright as day, with the full moon hanging in the sky, and as we walked we sang. We sat down on a rock to rest, and " Erangeline " began to suggest other songs to sing. ' " I'll -write you a, song," said I, "if you'll promise to sing it before we go home."

• This was agreed to. On the opposite side of the road was a white plank fence. Where we were sitting a party of negroes had been roasting ears of corn, and the charred sticks lay all around. With them I wrote the first verse of the song on the top plank of the fence, and the notes for four voices on the four planks beneath. Then we stood off, and sang it. The girls were delighted, and insisted upon having a chorus ; so I wrote the chorus on the planks. Well, we sang ifc over and over, and went home singing it. Next morning 'Evangeline * came down stairs humming the air, and asied me to write it out and finish it. I told her I couldn't do it, but she might go down and copy ifc off the fence. She took an umbrella and sheet of paper, and soon came back with the words and music. Then she insisted on another verse ; so I wrote another verse, on condition that I was to have a kiss and she to have the music'

Hays sent the composition to various music publishers, but couldn't sell it, and it was at length made public by the voice of Campbell, the negro minstrel. Three hun-dred-thousand copies have been sold, but the kiss was the only pay the author has received.