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Show 2V. Icore, cAuthor 01 Ai9ht elore', Wad cAikamed o Jt Everyone knows and loves the poem which begins 'Twas the night before Christmas, Christ-mas, when ail through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; but the man who wrote it, Dr. Clement Clarke Moore, was a-shamed a-shamed of it and would not allow it to be published under his name for more than 20 years. Dr. Moore, an aloof professor of Greek and Oriental literature in the Episcopal Seminary in New York, wrote the poem on Christmas Christ-mas eve 1822 and read it to his seven children. He had not planned for the poem to go further than his own family, but a relative who . was visiting the Moores put a copy in her dairy. The next year the relative's father sent it to a newspaper. Other newspapers printed the jingles and they quickly became known all over the country. The dignified Dr. Moore was embarrassed embar-rassed and considered it beneath a man of his scholastic standing to be the author of children's jingles. Twenty-two years later, however, how-ever, he finally publicly admitted authorship of the jingles and it was published in book form under his name for the first time. Ironically, the professor's serious ser-ious works are forgotten today. He is mentioned in encyclopedias because he wrote the celebrated Christmas verses. |