Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/102

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; But whatever else is happening, Hopper'll be striking Casey out.

There doubtless are greater poems in American literature, but I wonder which will have a longer life than Casey. I venture to predict that it will find its way before long into the school readers, that surest path to immortality.

In fact, since these articles were printed in the Saturday Evening Post, I have had a letter from a gentleman in North Dakota who tells me that Casey already is included in a reader in use in the local schools. And by constant repetition I have made it my very own, while the modest and all but unknown author even has had his rightful claim to his child disputed by some ten thousand impostors.

Returning one Sunday evening in May, 1926, from an excursion of The Lambs to West Point, where the Cadets had called for Casey, and I had struck him out on the Military Academy's new stadium athletic field, I found a letter from Manila in my letter box at The Lambs. The envelope contained only a clipping from the Manila Times. The clipping read: