Al­fred H. Ack­ley, 1910.

Bent­ley D. Ack­ley (MIDI, NWC, PDF).

The click­ing of the wheels on the rail joints on a stuf­fy day coach in which I was rid­ing be­came so au­di­ble, and had such a per­sist­ent­ly in­trus­ive note, I found my­self keep­ing time with the rhyth­mic clicks. I shift­ed from one thought to ano­ther, seek­ing to find a suit­a­ble phrase to match the rail-rhy­thm. All this with­out any def­i­nite ideas for a mel­o­dy. Of course, the fact that I was hur­ry­ing home be­tween meet­ings at Dan­ville [I­li­nois], and Bell­ing­ham [Wash­ing­ton], fo­cused my at­ten­tion on my home, for I would not get to see my young­est daug­hter, then three months old, un­less I left the Dan­ville cam­paign Thurs­day be­fore its close. This I did, and though the train out of Terre Haute [In­di­a­na] car­ried no parlor car, that old stuf­fy day coach clicked out a match­ing rhy­thm to the idea fixed in my mind, ‘Well, I’m com­ing home to­day.’ On the lit­tle pad which I in­var­i­ably car­ried with me in those days, I jot­ted down the idea and the mel­o­dy which ac­com­pa­nied it, sug­gest­ed with words beat­en out by the car-click­ing wheels on the rails.

My brother, A. H. Ack­ley, to whom I im­me­di­at­ely sent the man­u­script, wrote the words on the theme, and to the mel­o­dy I had sent him. I took the song with me when we opened the Bil­ly Sun­day meeti­ngs at New Cas­tle [Penn­syl­van­ia], in 1910.

Bentley Ackley, quoted in Sanville, p. 68