Home! home! sweet, sweet home!
There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.
An exile from home, splendour dazzles in vain:
Oh! give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds singing gaily, that came at my call;
Give me them—and the peace of mind, dearer than all.
Home! home! sweet, sweet home!
There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.
Clari had a great run, the chief rôle being taken by Miss Maria Tree, whose singing of the simple song caused a wonderful sensation, gifted as she was not only with a beautiful and expressive face, but with a fine voice which thrilled her hearers. More than one hundred thousand copies of the song as set to music were sold by the publishers within a year of its publication; but poor Payne reaped no pecuniary benefit from this source, nor did even his name appear as the author.
A story is told by the American newspapers that the power of the song once liberated its author from captivity. John Howard Payne was a warm personal friend of John Ross, the famous Cherokee Indian chief, and they were together when the Cherokees were ordered to remove from their home in Georgia to the prairie-lands west of the Mississippi River. Many refused to go; so the militia were ordered to scour the country and arrest all who stayed behind. Payne and Ross were seated before the fire in a miserable log-cabin, when seven or eight militiamen burst in, secured their prisoners, mounted them on horses, and led them away. As they left the hovel, rain began to fall, and continued all night, so that every man was thoroughly drenched. Towards midnight, one of Payne’s escort, to keep himself awake, began humming ‘Home! home! sweet, sweet home!’ and Payne said: ‘I never expected to hear that song under such circumstances and at such a time. Do you know the author?’—‘No!’ said the soldier. ‘Do you?’—‘Yes,’ answered Payne; ‘I am.’—‘Ho! ho!’ laughed the soldier. ‘You composed it, did you? Oh! tell the horse that! Look here. If you composed it—but I know you didn’t—you can say it all without stopping. It says something about pleasures and palaces, and cottages and birds. Now, pitch into it, and reel it off; and if you can’t, you’ll have to walk.’ Payne ‘pitched’ into it, and ‘reeled it off’ greatly to the satisfaction of his guardian, who vowed the composer of such a song should never go to prison if he could help it. When the party reached Milledgeville, the headquarters, they were, after a preliminary examination, and much to their agreeable surprise, discharged.