HOW HOVEY WROTE the STEIN SONG

It has occurred to me that few people know how the famous Stein Song came to be written.

In 1896 when the Psi Upsilon Fraternity were to hold their convention at Ann Arbor. Michigan, the late Andrew D. White, Ambassador to Germany, and then President of Cornell University, cabled to Richard Hovey, who was then visiting Maurice Maeterlinck in Belgium, to come to Ann Arbor and be prepared to read an ode written for the occasion.

When Hovey received the cablegram he was, as usual, "broke," so he took passage on a cattleship and started for the United States. Amidst these bucolic surroundings at sea he wrote his wonderful "Ode to Youth In the Springtime" but when it was done he felt that it needed to be lightened up a little by having a refrain so he wrote this refrain which are the words of the present "Stein Song."

One morning a few weeks later Arthur Livermore in going to his law office in Wall Street found Hovey parked outside his door. Mr. Livermore took the poet to his home.

He read to Mr. Livermore his ode and Mr. Livermore was very much impressed with it and said at the time that he thought the refrain was excellent in itself.

Hovey arrived at Ann Arbor and had a glorious time and read his ode which made a very deep impression, not only on those who heard him, but those who afterwards read it. It was widely published and later by arrangement with Bullard the refrain in this ode was set to music and is now known as "The Stein Song."

It was my honor in 1926, as National Secretary of Psi Upsilon, to be asked to read the same ode on the same place in the old Baptist Church in Ann Arbor where Richard Hovey had first read it in 1896.