Mearns is credited with the relatively well-known rhyme, composed in 1899 as a song for a play he had written, called The Psyco-ed [4] The play was performed in 1910 and the poem was first published as "Antigonish" in 1922.
As I was going up the stair
I saw a man who wasn�t there
He wasn�t there again today
I wish, I wish, he�d stay away.
"Antigonish" (1899)[2]