The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1877-09-21

WRITTEN lately Tor you TO see.
"Believe me to remain,
"Yours, respectfully,
"E. M. H."
Twill not g;vv her n..illo VI her address; we
English are very reticent, and initials will
answer all the purpose. But was touch.
ed--would not any body have been touch.
ed f--by this simple little letter, well and
neatly written, photography and grammar
quite correct; remarkably 80 for q girl OF
fifteen, as | heard she was. know, am
sorry to say, many Il girl aud boy too OF the
same age, costing tn, ir parents from e10O
to e200 year FOR school education, who
can neither write nor spell half so well as
the postman's daughter.
And the poem--here it is
"a MEMORY.
"Where the far-off mountain heights
| Tower above the leaves that CULVER,
| Where the checkered golden lights
Simmer on the ripping river,
| Grew my flower of lifes delights
In my heart still fair as ever.
t'All around, beneath, and Ger
-Slver bells soft music ring;
Valley lilies fragrance pour,
Bird and bee and brooklct sing;
But my lily is no more
"Some day on q distant strand,
Far beyond the olling river,
In that joy-illumined land
Where no sad voice whispers Never
She will take me by the hand
We shall live and love forever
Nothing very wonderful, certainly, nor
original; merely the echo Of other poems
with which the girl was familiar, but cor
rect in rhyme and rhythm, graceful, must
cal-quite equal to many verses written in
albums or sung in drawing rooms with
great applause. Nay, l have known mid.
die aged bards who set great store by
productions not very superior to that OF
this child of fifteen this "little deformed
girl" as she wrote of herself with such
simple pathos. Do any of you blooming
damsels offifteen, just beginning to find out
or to wish, that you were pretty and no
harm in being pretty, but very great
blessing, if you are not conceited over
what is no merit of yours do you, can
you, imagine what it would be to write
of your self deliberately that pathetic
line
Unquestionably must 60 and see her,
and early next morning, the only time /
had.
A lovely April morning it was, one of
those days which make one feel glad to be
alive The garden was full of birds songs,
budding leaves and flowers the familiar
outlines of the high moorland beyond
looked exquisitively soft and still. Thith-
er, in an other hour, we were all going,
Beyond the blue hills utmost RIM"
to tiny bay, a paradise for children,
where the miles and miles of bare green
down and lofty cliffs dipped into hollow
in which the beating of the tide has made
two arches of sea-worn rock, called the
Mermaid's cave. Already we seemed to
smell the salt breeze, as it came in land
ward few miles, bearing with it the scent
of furry commons and primrose lanes. And
such blue sky-such sunshine! Yes, it was,
as l say, good only to be alive.
We turned out into the fresh morning
air, and went down the town to see the post
mans daughter.
do not know if she had expected us
probably she had for, though so early in
the forenoon, she was up and dressed-so
far as it can be called sup" merely to move
from bed to sofa. Her being "dressed," too,
was very mild form of toilette; still, she
looked exceedingly neat and clean, even
pretty--for she was rather pretty in face
and, alas there was little to notice except
the face; the poor stunted figure appeared
no bigger than that of a child of ten
years old, and the white, wasted hands
were also unnaturally small. But the eyes,
the brow all she had of physical life SEEM
ed concentrated there.
One could quite understand now how it
was that the girl wrote poetry; how hers
was one of those abnormal cases in which
the mind is too large for the body or,
rather, when the mental faculties, deprived
of the balance-weight of a healthy body,
take refuge within themselves, and develop
to an almost painful degree, often to the
absolute ruin of that house of clay which
may be said less to shelter than to imprison
the soul.
In fine, this was obviously one of the sad
stories, so common and so inexplicable,
when "Why hast Thou made me thus 2"
seems the natural outcry; when reason
sinks powerless to explain away what seems
SO cruelty unjust and hard, and even faith,
quicker-sig can only accept the won
derful alleyiations that sometimes come,
and trust to having the mystery of it all
cleared up one day. Evidently it had
pleased God to give this poor girl soul,
but to put it into body so feeble, so diseas-
ed, that how the two had held together for
fifteen years was marvel. Yet her looks
were neither sad nor disconnected; on the
contrary, the face had remarkably placid
expression, and her smile of welcome and
the words she said were equally selfpossess-
ed, gentle, and sweet.
"Yes, she had been lying there, not once
out Of the house, ever since Christmas
four months now. Part of that time she
had suffered much (the root of her ailments
was in the spine) but she did not suffer
now-not, anyhow, as formerly. She was
very comfortable here, even though it was
a street, and the room" Ga respectable arti-
sans parlor, about twelve feet square, "was
not large. But when the weather changed
she hoped to get out into the garden be-
hind; she had lain there great deal last
summer. The flowers beside her--yes,
somebody had brought them she was ex-
cessively fond of flowers. And books-she
read every book she could get hold of; and
she was teaching herself Latin and French;
had tried to become pupil-teacher at
school, so as to earn her own living, but
had broken down in health, and been
obliged to come home. Probably she had
worked too hard, been too anxious, for she
did not get well, as other people, after an
attack of bronchitis, but had been invalid
ed for months. Certainly she did some
times feel rather tired, but people were so
very kind in coming to see r." and SO
on, and so on.
All these facts, communicated scarcely so
much by the girl herself-she seemed
very silent creature-as by her mother, a
delicate-looking woman, neat, respectable,
and quiet, reached me vaguely, for felt
oppressed by the exceeding sadness of the
whole thing, except for that which sancti-