Ben Bolt
A man should live in a garret aloof,
And have few friends and go poorly clad,
With an old hat stopping the chink in the roof,
To keep the Goddess constant and glad.
Most pot-boilers, of course, are not masterpieces and are soon forgotten, having served their purpose of providing their creators with a little ready cash. The Muse was certainly not present when English wrote “Ben Bolt,” and in the ordinary course of events, oblivion would have been its portion, but a strolling player named Nelson Kneass happened to see the verses and set them to an air adapted from a melancholy German melody. Kneass had gaged his public with a fiendish accuracy, verses and air exactly suited the taste of the day, and the song swept through America and England on such a wave of popularity that it netted its publishers over $60,000—of which neither English nor Kneass received any share.
Maudlin sentimentality was the prevailing, the indispensable, note in the popular songs of that epoch, but “Ben Bolt” outmaudlined the worst of them. Sweet Alice with her smiles and tears, her early grave and gray tombstone, the old mill, the ruined cabin, the little school, the purling brook—all the old tried properties are there, wedded to a mournful tune which suits them exactly—just the sort of tune to appeal
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