Funny Folks, August 2, 1884.
Scribners’ Monthly for May, 1881, contained a humorous collection of imitations of various authors, entitled “Home, Sweet Home, with Variations.” It commences by giving a couple of verses from the original poem by John Howard Payne; next comes a variation such as might have been written by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Walt Whitman, Austin Dobson, Oliver Goldsmith, and Alexander Pope are also supposed each to contribute a new setting of the old song, the imitation of Walt Whitman is exquisitely humorous; but that which principally concerns us here is the third imitation, which is entitled:—
Home, Sweet Home
as Mr. Francis Bret Harte might have woven it into a touching tale of a western gentleman in a red shirt—
Brown, o’ San Juan,
Stranger, I’m Brown.
Come up this mornin’ from ’Frisco—
Ben a-saltin’ my specie-stacks down.
Ben a-knockin’ around,
Fer a man from San Juan,