Page:Famous Single Poems (1924).djvu/340

 work to start an insurance paper, he fell in with Henry Waller at Louisville, and one result was his first elaboration of Stevenson’s quatrain.

Waller was the adopted son of Mary Francis Scott-Siddons, the famous English actress. He had been an infant prodigy as a pianist, but his father had overdriven him and he was on the verge of complete breakdown, when Mrs. Siddons intervened and bought his freedom. She sent him to study with Liszt, and he remained there three years, but, like most infant prodigies, his development was soon arrested, and he never became a great pianist. But he had acquired a thorough knowledge of music, which he put to use as a teacher and composer. He drifted to America and settled at Louisville, where Mr. Allison, who was also a music enthusiast, met him. The two became fast friends, and the idea of an American opera germinated between them. They went to work, Allison writing the lyrics and libretto and Waller the music—and, wonder of wonders, they did produce an opera, which they named “The Ogallallas,” which was accepted by the Bostonians, and which was actually produced at the Columbia Theater, Chicago, February 16, 1893. It had a regular dime novel plot—heroic scout, beautiful maiden, bloodthirsty redskins—and it was a failure. Americans weren’t interested in scouts and redskins, at least on the stage. They preferred