If I Should Die To-night
parody that was accepted as the true original, the sum, 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 fall but off. 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.”
Not very much is known about his life. Opie Read wrote a short biography of him to follow Mr. McGovern’s appreciation in his book of verses, but beyond recording that his full name was Benjamin Franklin King, that he was born at St. Joseph, Mich., March 17, 1857, that he was a sort of musical genius in his youth, and was survived by a widow and two sons, it is singularly empty of information.
“If I Should Die To-night” is the first poem in the book. For the rest, the verses are the usual run of mediocre humorous chaff, which filled the “columns” of that period. Most of them are in dialect, and with two exceptions, there is nothing about any of them to be remembered. One of the exceptions is this parody on Longfellow:
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