Familiar Songs - Their Authors & Histories

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	POOR TOM.	ioa


	TOM BOWLING. "Tom Bowling" is one of Chakles Dibdin's most characteristic productions. The original of the song was his oldest brother, Tom, many years his senior. He was a noble tar, and was for a long time captain of a vessel in the India service. He married in Calcutta, after obtaining the first marriage license ever granted in India. His wife says in one of her letters: " I name him, and think him, my Tom of ten millions; ten thousand is not giving him his full value.-'' He died while his famous brother Charles was still very-young ; but his memory will long live in " Tom Bowling." The song, of which the air also is Dibdin's, was introduced into the author's play called " The Oddities." May not Tom Bowling have been the model of the so-called new "school" of poetry, in which Bret Harte and John Hay are the most conspicuous pupils?