The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1902-06-17

Ing brook
| Where the children went to swim.
"The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday
The tree is living yet"
And most characteristic of all, this:
"I remember, / remember,
The fr-trees dark and high:
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky;
1t was a childish ignorance,
But now tits little joy
To know Pm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy"
The life that has the country for a
background has unfailing refreshment
for the Woodworking years that fol-
low youth, and hat life may be passed
in counting-house or factory or shop.
far from forest and field.
The farm may have seemed dull and
prosaic to the boy and girl. To the
man and woman it wears the colors of
poetry. Its simplicity, its intimate as
ISOLATION with nature ally it to the
noblest in the universe, and the mem
DRY of it prompts those who have
known it to a resolve that they will
never stoop to ideals unworthy of their
heritage.
The song, "Ben Bolt" (~referred to
in the foregoing article from the
Youths Companion), which has been
brought into especial prominence by
the recent death of its author, may not
be familiar to all Progressive Farmer
readers. The June Review of Re
views says of it:
although DR.. Thomas Dunn Eng
lish, who died on the first day of April
last, at the age of eighty-three, had
written fifty plays and more than a
thousand poems, he was known, first
and last, to his countrymen as the au-
thor of Ben Bolt From that song,
written in 1843 for the New York Mir
ror, then edited by George P. Morris
and Nathaniel P. Willis, it is said that
the publisher received 100000 and the
author not a penny . The music, an
adaptation from a German melody,
was composed by Nelson Kneass, a
strolling actor and singer, who re-
ceived a small sum for the copyright"
The song in full is as follows:
Oh! don't you remember sweet Alice,
Ben Bolt,
Sweet Alice, whose hair was so
brown,
Who wept with delight when you gave
her a smile,
And trembled with fear at your
frown?
In the old church yard in the valley,
Ben Bolt,
In a corner obscure and alone,
They have fitted a slab of the granite
so gray,
And sweet Alice lies under the stone.
Under the hickory tree, Ben Bolt,
Which stood at the foot of the hill,
Together we've lain in the MONDAY
shade
And listened to Appleton's mill,
The mill wheel has fallen to pieces,
Ben Bolt,
The rafters have tumbled in,
And a quiet that crawls around the
walls as you gaze.
Has followed the olden din.
And 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?
Grass grows on the masters grave,
Ben Bolt;
The spring of the brook is dry;
And of all the boys who were school
mates then
There are only you and I.
There is a change in the things I loved,
Ben Bolt;
They have changed from the old to
the new;
But I feel in the depths of my spirit
the truth
There never was change in you.
Twelve months, twenty, have passed,
Ben Bolt,
Since first we were friends-yet /
hail
Your presence a blessing, your friend
ship a truth,
Ben Bolt of the salt sea gale.
Teacher: "Name something of i'm
pOrtance existing today that was not
in existence 100 years ago." Small