Nashville patriot. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1858-1860, 1858-05-07
LITTLE RUTE'S SECRET;
OR, THE
Artists Love and Ambition.

i.
/ never had home like other children
when was a child. | was early left without
father or mother, and almost without kith or
kin. | was left poor, too, without enough,
baby as ] was, even 10 keep me from being Ii
burden on those who We're forced to take
the charge of me. | was in the world SIM
ply and solely little, desolate, useless
child.
The home, such as it was that fell to my
lot, was in the house of an aunt of my fathers
an old lady who took me to live with her
from feeling rather of duty than of love,
and into whose formal household my childish
advent made, / am afraid no very welcome
inroad. Yet my aunt was kind TO me, if she
was cold; and | who had never known "A more
genial home, was content with the one that
had fallen TO my share We led a peaceful,
quiet life. There was no poetry in il, but we
did without that; there was little beauty in
it, toe, but we do not feel the want of what
we have never known | was housed, and
fed, and chad; and If the world that during
those years hedged me in was narrow one,
did not feel its narrowness, for l had never
seen what lay beyond its limits.
This existence endured for me until | was
eighteen; then my grand-aunt died. | re-
collect that parting wildly still, rs the first
sorrow and the first glimpse oil the hidden
thing outside our daily life that had ever
had.
My aunt left me all she was possessed Of
and after her death, lived alone for "a few
months At the end Of that time, was sur
priscd one day by letter from my godmothcr,
Mrs. Erickson, which asked # | would come
aud live with her. Mrs. Erickson had been
cousin OF my mothers. Long ago, when |
had been little child, she had shown me
some kindness that l had not forgotten. Her
proposal was pleasant tn me, aud accepted
II. 1 set my house in order, and obtained "A
tenant for il; then, one autumn day, when
the sun shoue bright on harvest fields, babe
farewell To the village where had lived,
and set forth upon my journey TO my new
home.
That journeys end brought me to quaint
old town, dark with long, narrow streets.
whose stones time had impressed with hts seal
of solemn coloring, whose gloomy dimness
only here and there stole into sudden light at
some unlooked-ior opening, where the sun
shone upoa the grass growing around that
pavement of an untrod square, or giinted on
the bend of the bright. silent river, or linger-
I'd lovingly upon the tall, gray, half-decaying
towers of come old ume-eaten church. 1 saw
i linger 80 for the trst time on that autumn
evening aud the light, new 10 me at that
line, quickly grew familiar, for Ia the opening
before Que such old church, my godmother
lad her house, and SIMMER and winter, be-
tween her windows aud the riyulet there
,tood an eternal screen oi blaekening stone
, Wondering pile, all rich with antique de-
vices upon wall and capital, and arehiyault, |
aud delicate traceried windows, through |
whose narrow lights there came 10 as all that |
Ne ever saw OF the gold and crimson Of the |
western sky.
1t was q change from the village aud the |
souse that had lefl. There ali had been fat, 1