Dr. Thomas Dunn English wrote the words of "Ben Bolt" in New York, in 1842, when he was a young man of three-and-twenty. Mr. N. P. Willis had asked him to write a sea-song for _The New Mirror_, and so he wound up the last stanza with an allusion to "the salt-sea gale!" As a sea-song, "Ben Bolt" is not a success; but it has been sung on every sea and in every land where the English tongue is spoken. At Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1848, an English journalist named Hunt quoted the words (from a defective memory) to Nelson Kneass, who was attached to the local theatre; and, adapted by Kneass to a German melody, the song, in a somewhat garbled version, was introduced in a play called "The Battle of Buena Vista." In Helen Kendrick Johnson's "Our Familiar Songs, and Those Who Made Them" (Henry Holt & Co., 1881), the story of its vogue in England as well as in America is told effectively. Not only were ships and steam-boats named in its honor, but a play was built upon its suggestions, and as recently as in 1877 an English novelist made the memories evoked by the singing of the song a factor in the development of his catastrophe. Its revival at the hand of Mr. du Maurier is the latest and perhaps the most striking tribute to its hold upon the popular heart. To the author himself--in his ripe old age a member of the LIIId Congress--its fame is seemingly a bore, for he is quoted as saying:--"I am feeling very well and enjoying life as well as an old man can, but this eternal 'Ben Bolt' business makes me so infernally weary at times that existence becomes a burden. The other night, at a meeting of a medical association at my home in Newark, some one proposed that all hands join in singing 'Ben Bolt,' whereupon I made a rush for the door, and came very near forgetting the proprieties by straightway leaving home. However, I recovered my equilibrium and rejoined my friends. I don't think that General Sherman ever grew half so tired of 'Marching Through Georgia' as I have of that creation of mine, and it will be a blessed relief to me when the public shall conclude to let it rest." Apropos of the use made of the song in "Trilby," _Harper's Bazar_ published the words and music; whereupon the author sent this letter to the editor:-- "It is very pleasing to an old man like myself to have the literary work of a half-century since dragged to light and commended, as has been the case with 'Ben Bolt' of late. I was flattered by seeing my likeness--or, rather, the likeness of a younger man than myself--in your pages; but I must protest against some errors which, in spite of careful editing, enter into your transcription of the song. The words of the original were:-- 'Don't you remember the school, Ben Bolt, With the master so cruel and grim, And the shaded nook in the running brook, Where the children went to swim?' "This has been changed in the song, as usually sung, to read:--