"Before I left," says he, "I went to Brecon, and printed the 'Interlude of the King, the Justice, the Bishop, and the Husbandman,' and got an old acquaintance of mine to play it with me, and help me to sell the books. I likewise busied myself in getting subscribers to a book of songs called the 'Garden of Minstrelsy.' It was printed at Trefecca. The expense attending the printing amounted to fifty-two pounds, but I was fortunate enough to dispose of two thousand copies. I subsequently composed an interlude called 'Pleasure and Care,' and printed it; and after that I made an interlude called the 'Three Powerful Ones of the World: Poverty, Love, and Death.'"The poet's daughters were not successful in the tavern speculation at Llandeilo, and followed their father into North Wales. The second he apprenticed to a milliner, the other two lived with him till the day of his death. He settled at Denbigh in a small house which he was enabled to furnish by means of two or three small sums which he recovered for work done a long time before. Shortly after his return, his father died, and the lawyer seized the little property "for the old curse," and turned Tom's mother out.
After his return from the South Tom went about for some time playing interludes, and then turned his hand to many things. He learnt the trade of stonemason, took jobs, and kept workmen. He then went amongst certain bricklayers, and induced them to teach him their craft; "and shortly," as he says, "became a very lion at bricklaying. For the last four or five years," says he, towards the conclusion of his history, "my work has been to put up iron ovens and likewise furnaces of all kinds, also grates, stoves and boilers, and not unfrequently I have practised as a smoke doctor."The following feats of strength he performed after his return from South Wales, when he was probably about sixty years of age:-"About a year after my return from the South," says he, "I met with an old carrier of wood, who had many a time worked along with me.
He and I were at the Hand at Ruthyn along with various others, and in the course of discourse my friend said to me: 'Tom, thou art much weaker than thou wast when we carted wood together.' Ianswered that in my opinion I was not a bit weaker than I was then.
Now it happened that at the moment we were talking there were some sacks of wheat in the hall which were going to Chester by the carrier's waggon. They might hold about three bushels each, and Isaid that if I could get three of the sacks upon the table, and had them tied together, I would carry them into the street and back again; and so I did; many who were present tried to do the same thing, but all failed.
"Another time when I was at Chester I lifted a barrel of porter from the street to the hinder part of the waggon solely by strength of back and arms."He was once run over by a loaded waggon, but strange to say escaped without the slightest injury.
Towards the close of his life he had strong religious convictions, and felt a loathing for the sins which he had committed. "On their account," says he in the concluding page of his biography, "there is a strong necessity for me to consider my ways and to inquire about a Saviour, since it is utterly impossible for me to save myself without obtaining knowledge of the merits of the Mediator, in which I hope I shall terminate my short time on earth in the peace of God enduring unto all eternity."He died in the year 1810, at the age of 71, shortly after the death of his wife, who seems to have been a faithful, loving partner. By her side he was buried in the earth of the graveyard of the White Church, near Denbigh. There can be little doubt that the souls of both will be accepted on the great day when, as Gronwy Owen says:-"Like corn from the belly of the ploughed field, in a thick crop, those buried in the earth shall arise, and the sea shall cast forth a thousand myriads of dead above the deep billowy way."
