Langdon Smith - Evolution

Evolution

Aside from his journalism Smith's only known work is the romantic poem "Evolution", sometimes sub-titled or mistakenly called "A Tadpole and a Fish". The poem became very popular even before his death. It has been reprinted many times since.

In his biographical sketch of Smith Lewis Allen Brown describes it as follows:

"… it is as the author of " Evolution " that he is best remembered. Skilled as a war correspondent, himself a veteran Indian fighter, a technical writer of sports, possessed of a mentality too great to be handicapped through lack of university training, he thought for himself upon life and death, of the past and future, and in " Evolution " voiced his beliefs."

Brown described how Evolution was composed:

"The first few stanzas of " Evolution " were written in 1895 and published in the New York Herald where he was then employed. Four years later, when a member of the New York Journal staff, he wrote several more. These he laid aside for a while and then, from time to time, added a stanza until it was completed. Whether the editorial department failed to appreciate the poem, or the foreman of the composing room needed something with which to fill out a page is not known, but " Evolution " first appeared in its entirety in the center of a page of want advertisements in the New York Journal."

"A work of such merit, however, could not be lost. Mr. Smith received thousands of congratulatory letters from all parts of the world, accompanied by requests for copies of the poem which were exceedingly difficult to secure until reprinted in April, 1906, in The Scrap Book, edited by Mr. Frank A. Munsey."

Gardner claims to have located the precise issue of The New York Herald in which Evolution was first published: that of September 22, 1895. He also notes that Brown's information was taken from the Who's Who In America 1906-1907 article and an obituary published in The New York American on April 9, 1908, page 6, and that Brown does not add any new information to these sources.

According to a statement in The New York Times Book Review of July 23, 1910 it was "printed in full and illustrated in The Scrap Book of June 1909." Tributes to him on his death invariably emphasize the poem. According to a notice in the Ocala (Florida) Evening Star of April 17, 1908:

"Langdon Smith, the war correspondent and writer, died on Wednesday, at his home in Brooklyn, New York. No New York newspaper man was better known than Smith, who could describe, equally well, a battle or a baseball game, says the New York Post. But the thing that he wrote which will live the longest -- because it is worth while -- is his poem "Evolution," which has been reprinted all over the country."

"Evolution" is reprinted, with helpful hyperlinks and comments, on the Wikiquote page devoted to the poem and to Smith.