If I Should Die To-night
come from Mr. Dungan. What he did to Mr. Powell is also unrecorded, but the subsequent relations between the two men were undoubtedly somewhat strained.
Enter, then, Ben King.
It is a curious fact that, although a volume of Ben King’s verse was published after his death for the benefit of the family he left behind him, he is almost as much a one-poem man as Miss Smith is a one-poem woman, and practically his sole claim to remembrance is based upon his parody of her poem.
There has always been a great deal of confusion in the public mind as to who was the author of which. In fact not long ago “A Constant Reader” sent the following note to a well-known literary weekly, which solemnly published it:
I notice “M. D.” asked for the words to Ben King’s poem, “If I Should Die To-night.” You published a parody on it. Inclosed find the poem as recited by him at a banquet in Bowling Green, Ky. He was found dead in bed the next morning.
And the words of Miss Smith’s poem followed.
Now Ben King was indeed found dead one morning in a hotel room in Bowling Green—but that was in 1894, so that it would be nearly as impossible to ascertain what he really did
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