The Topeka state journal., 1904-06-01
THE INGALLS, SONNET.
Senator Recited It Years Before
italian Date OF Writing.

Mrs. John J. ingalls,, widow of the
late senator. has received the follow
ing letter from Rochester, New York,
showing that Senator Ingalls, recited
his lines on Opportunity six years be-
fore the Italian claims he wrote his
poem on the same subject:
Rochester, n. Y, Dartmouth street,
May 2S, 1904.
I send you some scraps of literature
which the controversy concerning the
sonnet on Opportunity has produced
locally. Doubtless the paragraph con-
corning the senator's recitation to Mrs.
Fitch OF the sonnet in 1881 may inter
est you. l am somewhat apprehensive
that she has confused dates someWha
because the senator was at our house
several times after 1891, as we'll as in
1881, but Mrs. Fitch says she is very
clear in her recollection both of the in
cident and the occasion. At all events
it seems very clear that the Ingalls,
sonnet was written prior to 1887, when
the italian doctor processes to have
finished his crude verse. The news
papers at the east are full of the sub
ject, and the tributes paid to the high
character of your husbands sonnet are
of the most cordial character-aII
agreeing that it is one of the greatest
poetic productions of the nineteenth
century.
Mrs. Fitch does not mean to say
that the senator repeated the sonnet to
her in its perfected FORM but in sub
stance, and that the first and last
l1neS were as they now stand.
With great respect, / am,
Yours very sincerely,
CHAS. E. FITCH.
Mrs. Jno. Jas. Ingalls,.
Following are the clippings:
Rochester Post Express, May y,
1904: 1t was suggested in the Post
Express of yesterday that it might be
well to determine the date at which
Senator Ingalls, wrote his sonnet, "Op-
portunity." Mrs. Charles E. Fitch, as
a step in that direction, says that Mr..
Ingalls, was a guest at her house in
this city in 1881; and. in the course of
conversation happened to mention the
readiness to grasp opportunity as the
key to success in life, and illustrated
his theory by referring to the course
of James A. Garfield, who, he said, had
never failed to recognize and seize
upon opportunity, at all hazards, and
so had won his way to the presidency,
an honor that greater men had failed
to attain Then he repeated his ia
nous sonnet, and when asked as to
its authorship, said that he had writ
ten it some time before. Mrs. Fitch is
positive as to the date and the occas-
ion. DR.. Gigliotti says that his own
sonnet was written in June, 1887, six
THE SONNET OPPORTUNITY"
To the Editor of the Democrat and
SirEI am pleased to note the skill, fair
ness and ripe literary judgment with
which you meet the claim made on behalf
of DR.. Gigliotti that the magnificent SON
net Opportunity, by the late Senator
ingalls,, is plagiarism of the crude ef-
fort on the same theme by the doctor It
will require strong and cumulative proof
to convince the admirers of the senator's
masterpiece that his was not the original
and the doctors the feeble copy.
You will observe that Mrs. ingalls, in
denies the doctors claim and
tells of the many hours which the sena-
tor devoted to the preparation and per
fecting of the sonnet Even if it shall be
shown that the doctor discovered the
rough ore the senator might well have
asserted that the pure gold issued from
the alembic of his own mind, as1Charles
Reade assumed that genius had the right
of appropriation, if it gave thereto Its
own stamp: but do not imagine that tae
assumption will be necessary in this case.
I do not. however, intend a criticism
I write rather to reveal ea{fact which may
be worth telling-the estimate that the
senator placed upon his own work. 1
once asked him as to-what of that which
he had written and spoken during his lie
he considered superior to alI else He re-
piled unhesitatingly that he regarded
Opportunity" as such-hiS most spark
ling gem, his ''magnum opus"
Certainly amid all his brilliant essays,
the treasures of his most opulent vocab-
ulary, he would not have been likely to
select a bit OF plagiarism as that which
he most highly esteemed
CHARLES E. FITCH.
Rochester, N. Y. May 26, 1904