Famous Single Poems
appearance in the Troy Sentinel; and it seems strange that, if he really wrote it and found every one to whom he read it so delighted with it, he did not himself, in the years following 1805, send it to some paper for publication. If we are to believe the Livingston chronology it remained unpublished for eighteen years. As to the surroundings of the two men, no doubt "Chelsea Farm" had a lawn and wide fireplaces as well as "Locust Grove," and Mrs. Moore was just as likely to be called "Mama" and to wear a 'kerchief over her head at night as was Mrs. Livingston!
Familiarity with the Saint Nicholas legend was also, of course, common to both men, and one is inclined to think that the solution of the riddle may be that Henry Livingston really did write a Christmas jingle to read to his children in 1805—and so did Clement Clarke Moore seventeen years later. These may very easily have been enough alike both in theme and treatment to create confusion in the memories of the Livingston family, and to cause them honestly to believe that the poem which subsequently became so famous and which was attributed to the New York theologian was the same one they had first heard in childhood from their father's lips. Charges of plagiarism have very often originated in just this way.
However, if no one else had ever claimed it,
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