Ben King's Verse/Introduction
So Far as we know, this young man, now so suddenly dead, was the drollest mimic and gentlest humorist of our region. He existed as the welcome and mirthful shadow of conventional and tiresome things.
He began as the expositor of " The Maiden's Prayer" on the piano, where each accented note was flat or sharp, and the music flowed rapidly, or over great difficulties, as the score might determine. He arose, and looking half-witted, recited with unapproachable modesty the stammering delight which he would feel "if he could be by Her!" He frosled his hair and became Paderewski, who forthwith fell upon the piano tooth and nail, tore up the track, derailed the symphony, went down stairs and shook the furnace, fainted at the pedals, and was carried out rigid by supers--the greatest pianist of any age. He wrote "If I Should Die To-night"--a parody that was accepted as the true original, the sun, the center of the great If-I-should-die-to-night system of thought and poetry. He wrote the poet's lament--that there was nothing to eat but food, and nowhere to come but off. The artists of the newspaper world generously sprang to his side; they placed him pictorially before the people, and determined, with almost prophetic spirit, that our small circle should not alone dwell with undiminishing laughter upon the gambols of Ben King. He was coldly, then not coldly, then warmly received by the church fairs, the clubs, and the Elks, where he got a supper--if any were left. At last he charged a small sum for appearing publicly, and this sum was rapidly enlarging and his fortune was in sight, when the hotel porter found him dead in his room at Bowling Green, Kentucky.
During the years we knew him, he never spoke to us in a disparaging way concerning any other person, and unless Paderewski's comb was ruffled by Ben's exhibition of hair and haste in piano-playing, no parody, or perk, or prank of Ben King ever depended for its success upon the wounding of another creature's feelings.
We all accounted him a genius, and while we could not guess what he would do next, we awaited his performances with complacence, laughing as if we owned him and had ourselves ordered his latest jeu d'esprit. We deplored the untimely moment of his end; we held beautiful, solemn and impressive memorial services over his body, with music by the sweet singers whom he had loved when he was alive, and touching words by ministers of the gospel; we buried him affectionately, as one who could least be spared from our circle; and as we were the witnesses of what he did, we now charge ourselves to be the testimonies of his rare talents.
John McGovern.