James Hilary Mulligan, the author of In Kentucky, was born at Lexington, Kentucky, November 21, 1844. He was graduated at St. Mary's College, Montreal, Canada, in 1864; and five years later Kentucky (Transylvania) University granted him his degree in law. For forty years Judge Mulligan has been known in Kentucky as a lawyer, orator, and maker of clever, humorous verse. He was editor of the old Lexington Morning Transcript for a year; and for six years he was judge of the Recorder's Court of Lexington, from which work he won his title of "judge." From 1881 to 1888 Judge Mulligan was a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives; and from 1890 to 1894 he was in the State Senate. In 1894 President Cleveland appointed Judge Mulligan Consul-General at Samoa, and this post he held for two years. While in Samoa he saw much of Robert Louis Stevenson, who was working upon Weir of Hermiston, and well upon his way to the undiscovered country when the Kentucky diplomat met him. When Stevenson died, December 4, 1894, the first authoritative news of his passing came in a now rare and precious little booklet of thirty-seven pages which Lloyd Osbourne, Judge Mulligan, Bazett Haggard, brother of the English novelist, and another writer, sent out to the world, entitled A Letter to Mr. Stevenson's Friends (Apia, Samoa, 1894). It contained a detailed account of the writer's last days, his death, and funeral. Mr. Osbourne "ventured also to reprint Mr. Gosse's beautiful lines, To Tusitala in Vailima, which reached Mr. Stevenson but three days before his death." President Cleveland offered to send Judge Mulligan to Cape Town, Africa, but he declined the appointment, and came home. For the past fifteen years he has devoted his attention to the law and to the writing of verse and prose. His Samoa, the Government, Commerce, and People (Washington, 1896), is said to be the most exhaustive account of that island ever published. Judge Mulligan's little humorous poem, In Kentucky, has made him famous. First read at a banquet in the old Phoenix Hotel, Lexington, in 1902, it has been declaimed in the halls of Congress and gotten into the Congressional Record. It has been parodied a thousand times, reproduced in almost every newspaper in English, illustrated, and at least one Kentuckian has heard it chanted by an Englishman in the shadow of the Pyramids in Egypt! More than a million souvenir postal cards have been sold with the verses printed upon them; and had the author had In Kentucky copyrighted, he would have reaped a harvest of golden coins. As poetry Judge Mulligan's Over the Hills to Hustonville, or The Bells of Old St. Joseph's, are superior to In Kentucky, but they are both comparatively unknown to the general public. Judge Mulligan's home, "Maxwell Place," on the outskirts of Lexington, was the birthplace of In Kentucky.

Bibliography. Lexington Leader (April 4, 1909); Library of Southern Literature (Atlanta, 1910, v. xiv).

IN KENTUCKY

[From The Lexington Herald (February 12, 1902)]

OVER THE HILL TO HUSTONVILLE

[From The Lexington Leader (April 4, 1909)]