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ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN others. I have met or corresponded with most of these pretenders in my time, and none has yet offered me the slightest proof or corroborative evidence to authorship, while Mr. Thayer has shown me three other manuscripts worthy of Casey's creator, and overwhelming supporting evidence. He lives to-day in Santa Barbara, California.

Thayer indubitably wrote Casey, but he could not recite it. He was the most charming of men, but slight of build and inclined to deafness and, like most persons so afflicted, very soft spoken. He had, too, at that time a decided Harvard accent.

At the importunity of his fellow club members that night he recited some of his comic verse, but begged off on Casey, pleading that this was my particular stunt. The crowd, which had been long at the bar, would not take no, however, and backed him into a corner.

I have heard many another give Casey. Fond mammas have brought their young sons to me to hear their childish voices lisp the poem, but Thayer's was the worst of all. In a sweet, dulcet Harvard whisper he implored Casey to murder the umpire, and gave this cry of mass animal rage all the emphasis of a caterpillar