Strange, was it not?  Far from its native deep,
      One song it sang;
  Sang of the awful mysteries of the tide,
  Sang of the restless sea, profound and wide—­
      Ever with echoes of the ocean rang.

  And as the shell upon the mountain height
      Sang of the sea,
  So do I ever, leagues and leagues away—­
  So do I ever, wandering where I may,
      Sing, O my home! sing, O my home! of thee!_

I have seen it stated that Madame Modjeska regarded the liberty taken with her name in this connection with feelings of displeasure, and Hamlin Garland has reported a conversation with Field, during the summer of 1893, when the latter, speaking of his work in Denver, and of “The Tribune Primer” as the most conspicuous thing he did there, said:  “The other thing which rose above the level of my ordinary work was a bit of verse, ‘The Wanderer,’ which I credited to Modjeska, and which has given her no little annoyance.”  In his note to Mrs. Thompson’s manuscript copy of “The Wanderer,” Field says: 

These verses appeared in the Denver Tribune credited to Helena Modjeska.  They were copied far and wide over Modjeska’s name.  Modjeska took the joke in pretty good part.  The original publication was June, 1883.

Madame Modjeska not only took the joke in “pretty good part,” but esteemed its perpetrator all the more highly for the light in which it placed her before the public, which she was then delighting with her exquisite impersonations of Rosalind and Mary Stuart.  For years after its publication Madame Modjeska, wherever she appeared throughout the country, was reminded of this joke by the scores of letters sent to her room, as soon as she registered, requesting autograph copies of “The Wanderer,” or the honor of her signature to a clipping of it neatly pasted in the autograph hunter’s album.  Nor were autograph hunters the only ones imposed on by the signature to “The Wanderer.”  In August, 1883, Professor David Swing, writing in the Weekly Magazine, gave it as his opinion that the alleged Modjeska poem was indeed written by Modjeska, and concluded:  “The conversation and tone of her thoughts as expressed among friends betrays a mind that at least loves the poetic, and is quite liable to attempt a verse.  The child-like simplicity of this little song is so like Modjeska that no demand arises for any outside help in the matter.”  And Field, like the true fisherman he was, having secured a fine rise, proceeded to remark:  “It will, perhaps, pain the Professor to learn that Madame Modjeska now denies ever having seen the verses until they appeared in print.”

But not until Field reclaimed his child and published “The Wanderer” as his own, in “A Little Book of Western Verse,” was the verse-reading public satisfied to give the Polish comedienne a long rest from importunities concerning it.

CHAPTER X