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Show ; "BEN BOLT." "Oh, don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?" Everybody does remember sweet Alice, but how many remember the composer? Here is the admirable writer, Lawrence Marshall, telling us all about Thomas Dunn English,, the author of "Ben Bolt," and, among other interesting incidents of his life, that he was born in Philadelphia, June 29, 1819 the son of an English father and mother. The writer was, we take it, misled by George Du Mau-rier, Mau-rier, who, in his "Trilby," vaguely refers to "Ben Bolt" as an old English song. Yet it is not English, Eng-lish, only in so far as its composer's name is such. Dr." Thomas Dunn English, who; wrote the immortal immor-tal ballad over seventy years ago, was an Irish-American, Irish-American, a member of congress, and, in hi3 day, a very popular man. He died April 1, 1902. "Ben Bolt" first appeared in the New York Mirror, edited ed-ited by the poet, N. P. Willis, Sept. 25, 1843. The song "caught on" and became for a time as popular as "The Mocking Bird." It had passed out of public pub-lic memory until Du Maurier's "Trilby" was staged, when it once again became a popular ballad. More than a million of copies of "Ben Bolt" were sold between the years '46 and '57. Dr. English told a friend (Boyle O'Reilly) that the song was suggested sug-gested to him from reading Goldsmith's "Deserted Village." Here is the version revised by Dr. English Eng-lish a few years before he died: BEN BOLT. Oh, don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt, Sweet Alice with hair so brown ? She wept with delight when you gave her a smile, And trembled with fear at your frown. In the old churchyard in the valley, Ben Bolt, In a corner obscure and alone, They have fitted a slab of granite so gray, And sweet Alice lies under the stone. Oh, don't you remember the wood, Ben Bolt, Near the green sunny slope of the hill, . Where oft we have sung 'neath its wide-spreading shade And kept time to the click of the mill ? The mill has gone to decay, Ben Bolt, , And a quiet now reigns all around; See, the old rustic porch, with its roses so sweet, Lies scattered and fallen to the ground. Oh, don't you remember the school, Ben Bolt, And the master so kind and so true, And the little nook by the clear running brook, Where we gather'd flow'rs as they grew? On the master's grave grows the grass, Ben Bolt, And the running little brook is now dry, And of all the friends who were schoolmates then There remains, Ben, but" you and I. |