Then as we linger at luncheon here, O'er many a dainty dish, Let us drink anew to the time when you Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish.
[20] Copyright, 1909, by L. E. Bassett and Company.
William James Lampton ("Will J. Lampton"), founder of the "Yawp School of Poetry," was born in Lawrence county, Ohio, May 27, 185-, within sight of the Kentucky line. (Being a bachelor, like Henry Cleveland Wood, he has hitherto declined to herald the exact date of his birth.) His parents were Kentuckians and at the age of three years he was brought to this State. His boyhood and youth was spent in the hills of Kentucky. He was fitted at private schools in Ashland and Catletsburg, Kentucky, for Ohio Wesleyan University, which he left for Marietta College. In 1877 Mr. Lampton established the _Weekly Review_--spelled either way!--at Ashland, Kentucky. Although he had had no prior training in journalism, he wrote eleven columns for his first issue. His was a Republican sheet, and the good Democrats of Boyd county saw to it that it survived not longer than a year. From Ashland Mr. Lampton went to Cincinnati and joined the staff of _The Times_. _The Times_ was too rapid for him, however, and from Cincinnati he journeyed to Steubenville, Ohio, to take a position on _The Herald_. Mr. Lampton remained on that paper for three years, when he again came to Kentucky to join the staff of the Louisville _Courier-Journal_. Some time later his paper sent him to Cincinnati, which marked his retirement from Kentucky journalism. It will thus be seen that he "lapsed out of Kentucky for a time, and lapsed again at the close of 1882." Leaving Cincinnati he went to Washington and originated the now well-known department of "Shooting Stars" for _The Evening Star_. For some years past he has resided in New York, working as a "free-lance." For a long time he contributed a poem almost every day to _The Sun_, _The World_, or some other paper. In 1910 the governor of Kentucky created the poet a real Kentucky colonel; and this momentous elevation above earth's common mortals is heralded to-day upon his stationery. Colonel Lampton, then, has published six books, the editions of three of which are exhausted, and he is now happy to think that his works are "rare, exceedingly scarce." The first of them, _Mrs. Brown's Opinions_ (New York, 1886), was followed by his chief volume hitherto, _Yawps and Other Things_ (Philadelphia, 1900). The "other things" were poems, not yawps. Colonel Henry Watterson contributed a clever introduction to the attractive volume; and another form of verse was born and clothed. _The Confessions of a Husband_ (New York, 1903), was a slight offset to Mary Adams's _The Confessions of a Wife_. Colonel Lampton's other books are: _The Trolley Car and the Lady_ (Boston, 1908), being "a trolley trip from Manhattan to Maine;" _Jedge Waxem's Pocket-Book of Politics_ (New York, 1908), which was "owned by Jedge Wabash Q. Waxem, Member of Congress from Wayback," bound in the form of an actual pocket-book; and his latest collection of cleverness, _Tame Animals I Have Known_ (New York, 1912). The tall--and bald!--Kentuckian lives at the French Y. M. C. A., New York, in order, as he himself has said, "to give a Parisian tinge to his religion." His "den" is a delight to Bohemians, a replica of many a country newspaper office in Kentucky. He is one of the joys of life surely. And though he has turned out almost as much as Miss Braddon, he can recall but the four lines he wrote in 1900 upon Mr. James Lane Allen: