Susan Edmonstone Ferrier Ferrier visited Walter Scott at Ashiestiel Farm and House on the banks of the River Tweed, near Clovenfords in the Scottish Borders, and again in 1829 and 1831 at his new house, Abbotsford. They enjoyed each other's company and he wrote of her: "This gifted personage besides having great talents has conversation the least exigeant of any author, female at least..., simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready at repartee, and all this without the least affectation of the blue stocking." He mentioned her in the same sentence as Maria Edgeworth and Frances Burney in 1825. Ferrier's account of the
On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away songs. Dresser officially dedicated the song to fourteen-year-old Mary South, a native of Terre Haute, whom he had never met. The second verse of "Wabash" contains reference to "Mary", but Dresser told a reporter that the name was "fictitious" and used only for "rhythmical purposes", and denied that the inspiration for the name came from a girl he once courted in his youth. When asked what led him to write the song Dresser said, "The same sweet memory that inspired that other Hoosier, James Whitcomb Riley, to sing of the 'Old Swimmin' Hole' ... I was born on the banks