While traveling recently through the South, the writer was marooned for several hours near Horse Cave, in Kentucky. The Cumberland River was very high, swamping the darkies’ cabins en route, compelling the colored people to take refuge on their roofs, where they waited “fo’ de ribber to go down.”
The negroes accepted the situation very cheerfully, many playing their banjoes and singing olden time melodies and making light of their predicament.
Almost involuntarily, I began humming “My Old Kentucky Home” and my thoughts were of the “yellow fields o’ corn,” when a voice behind me inquired, “Do you like that song?” I assured him that the tune was all right, but the words were a trifle silly.
“Well, I don’t think so,” he remarked, “the words and air are both very sweet to me, and if you’ll make room for me, I’ll tell you how that song compelled me to make a trip of 2,000 miles.”
Space was given him and he began his narrative.
“It was five years ago that I was induced to go west by the alluring advertisements of the railroad company, who related how easy it was to speedily get rich in Colorado.
“I started with my outfit and a couple of weeks later located at Cripple Creek, then a prosperous mining camp.
“Well, stranger, I didn’t like it there in the mountains, I couldn’t get used to the country and the people, and the climate was so different from ‘Old Kaintuck.’ Why, it was just as liable to snow on the 4th of July as it was on the 1st of January.
“It was very lonesome for me and I longed to be home again with my dear old friends, and I determined to remain at home if I ever got back. You have no idea what homesickness is until you have had the actual experience.
“About 11 o’clock one night, I was passing a saloon near my home when I heard a phonograph playing ‘Kentucky Home.’
“I entered the place and asked the bartender to change a silver dollar into nickels, which he did.
“I sat down by the phonograph and played that piece over and over and over again, till my nickels were gone, then I changed another dollar which went the same way.
“I was, by this time, completely saturated with ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ and the longing to return came so strong that I straightway went to my hotel, packed my trunk, paid my bill, purchased a ticket for Louisville and took the 4 A. M. train for Denver, from whence I departed for home and here’s where I’m going to live and die, in spite of all inducements to show me some more favored clime.
“Yes, I love ‘Kaintuck’ and I love that old song you hum,” and the stranger was singing his favorite air when the train pulled into Horse Cave.