actual encounter with
some woman or girl whose life had seemingly if not actually gone to
wreck on the shore of love or passion. At any rate he came into the
office of his publishing house one gray November Sunday afternoon--it
was our custom to go there occasionally, a dozen or more congenial
souls, about as one might go to a club--and going into a small room
which was fitted up with a piano as a "try-out" room (professionals
desiring a song were frequently taught it in the office), he began
improvising, or rather repeating over and over, a certain strain which
was evidently in his mind. A little while later he came out and said,
"Listen to this, will you, Thee?"

He played and sang the first verse and chorus. In the middle of the
latter, so moved was he by the sentiment of it, his voice broke and he
had to stop. Tears stood in his eyes and he wiped them away. A moment or
two later he was able to go through it without wavering and I thought it
charming for the type of thing it was intended to be. Later on (the
following spring) I was literally astonished to see how, after those
various efforts usually made by popular music publishers to make a song
"go"--advertising it in the _Clipper_ and _Mirror_, getting various
vaudeville singers to sing it, and so forth--it suddenly began to sell,
thousands upon thousands of copies being wrapped in great bundles under
my very eyes and shipped express or freight to various parts of the
country. Letters and telegrams, even, from all parts of the nation began
to pour in--"Forward express today ---- copies of Dresser's 'Tell Them
That You Saw Me.'" The firm was at once as busy as a bee-hive, on "easy
street" again, as the expression went, "in clover." Just before this
there had been a slight slump in its business and in my brother's
finances, but now once more he was his most engaging self. Every one in
that layer of life which understands or takes an interest in popular
songs and their creators knew of him and his song, his latest success.
He was, as it were, a revivified figure on Broadway. His barbers,
barkeepers, hotel clerks, theatrical box-office clerks, hotel managers
and the stars and singers of the street knew of it and him. Some
enterprising button firm got out a button on which the phrase was
printed. Comedians on the stage, newspaper paragraphers, his bank teller
or his tailor, even staid business men wishing to appear "up-to-date,"
used it as a parting salute. The hand-or