Page:Famous Single Poems (1924).djvu/120

 staff was rather proud that the New York Sun should think well enough of the poem to copy the last eight stanzas. The first five were remorselessly lopped off—but it has always been one of the inalienable rights of exchange editors to mutilate masterpieces, so nobody even thought of protesting, and it was in this acephalous form that Casey started on his travels through the east—a fact whose relevance will appear later on. Luckily it was in the Examiner and not in the Sun that Mr. Gunter saw it, so he got the complete poem. He cut it out and put it in his pocket and bided his time.

De Wolf Hopper was appearing at Wallack's Theater in New York City in a comic opera called Prince Methusalem. He was not then the public institution he has since become, but just a rising young comedian for whom "Wang" had not yet been written. However, even then, he had a wide circle of acquaintances, of whom Mr. Gunter was one. It chanced that one morning, as he was looking over the paper, Mr. Gunter saw the announcement that the New York and Chicago baseball clubs were to be at Wallack's that night as Mr. Hopper's guests. He bethought him of "Casey at the Bat," hunted up Mr. Hopper and gave it to him with the suggestion that he recite it. He added that it was a really great poem and was certain to make a hit with the baseball people.