Description: Randal Kendall Munkittrick’s poem “Ghosts” first appeared in print in the Atlantic Monthly in March of 1885. It was later set to music by Margaret Ruthven Lang in 1889.

Munkittrick wrote out two stanzas:

 

Out in the misty moonlight/The first snow flakes I see/As they frolic among the leafless/Limbs of the apple tree

 

Faintly they seem to whisper,/As round the boughs they wing:/“We are the ghosts of the blossoms/That died in the early spring.”

 

He signed the handwritten text, which is on a 9”x6” piece of ivory paper, “R. K. Munkittrick”, and has dated it November 22, 1898 (Summit, NJ). Item #A01131.

 

Richard Kendall Munkittrick (1853-1911) was a humorist and the editor of the periodicals Puck and Judge. He humorously described himself as “Descended from a race of clergymen and drunkards, I am a natural born lotus eater,”. He was also the author of several books, Farming, 1891; The Moon Prince and Other Nabobs, 1893; Bugville: Life for Big and Little Folk 1902, and others.

 

Condition: Scattered light soil, otherwise very good condition.