West Virginia freeman. (Parkersburg, W. Va.) 1881-1886, 1883-04-25
Alice Cary's GirlhOod.

and small, !" on a farm in the Mi
ami Valley, eight miles north of
Cincinnati. She has given us a
glimpse of her first home and its
surroundings in her poem entitled,
Order for Picture"
always and always, night and morn,
woods upon woods, with fields of corn
Lying between them, not quite sere,
And not in the full. thick, leafy bloom,
W hen the wind can hardly find breathing
room;
Under the tassel-cattle near
blung shorter the short, green grass,
And hedge of sumach and sassafras,
With blue birds twittering all around
IAN, good painter, you can't paint sound y
These and the house where l was born
Low and little and black and old,
With children many as it can hold"
In such a house lived Robert
Cary and Elizabeth Jessup, his
wife, with their nine children of
WHOM Alice was the fourth. Ro-
bert Cary was man of superior
intelligence, Of sound principles
and blameless life. He was a tall,
welEbuilt man, with curling black
hair and bright brown eyes. To
see father and daughter together,
one would in~oluntarily exclaim,
Glow alike" I can describe the
mother no better than by giving
Alice's portrait of her in her "Ord-
err for Picture"
"a lady, the loveliest ever the sun
Looked down upon you must paint for me;
Oh, If could only make you
Thesriear blue eyes, the tender smile,
The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace,
The wo1nan's soul and the angels face,
That are beamingcm me all the whale
need not speak these foolish words,
Yet Que word tellsYou all | would say;
Shells my mother you will agree
4 That all the rest m9y be thrown away"
She died in AEce's girlhood
Such were the father and mother
of Alice Cary. From her father
she inherited poetic temperament,
love of nature and of dumb Great
ures From her mother she inher-
tied her interest in public affairs,
her passion for justice, her devotion
to truth and duty, as she saw it. her
clearfperceptions and sturdy com
nonsense.
Inthe autumn of 1892, as the re-
suit cf persevering industry and
frugal living, anew house was cree
ted for the family, grown too large
to be Longer sheltered by the old
roof-tree.
Alice wrote, 6, udied and publish
ed for ten long gears, often discour-
aged and despoG dent, yet never de-
sDairinr. One ef the severe6t criti-
Itcisms passed oc her early poems
was that they were "full of graves"
Remem 5ering the bereaped and
lonely girl, whose daily walk end
ed at the tomb on the hillside,
where her mother and sisters slept,
how COLD her early song escape
the shadow of death and the,vibra-
ton of corrow? Her first Gitera-
~ adventure appeared in the SeJati-
rel (now Star Of tIs West), publish-
ed in Cincinnati. 1t was enS;ttled
"The Child of Sorrow" and was
written In her eighteenth gear.
After the establish ng Of the Ma
tional Era at Washington in B347,
she wrote regularly for its columns,
and here, fer the frs4 time, attolnp-
ted prose in a series O. stories under
a fictitious name. A few years af-
ter, Alice, with her sister PhoeDe,
abandoned their home in the VEST
and went to Sew York, where they
remained and worked Soon aftar
she published the first series at
"Clovernook Papers" They were
full Of freshness and fragrance Of
her native fields; full of simple,
original, graphic pictures Of the
country, and the men and women
she loved best full of the exquis- !
tie touches of a spontaneous, child
like genius. They were gathered |
up by the public az eagerly as the
children gather wild flowers. They
sold largely in this country and in
Great Britain. The next year a
second series was published with
unabated success, and The following
wear the "Clovernook Children"
was published. This was as popu-
lar with young readers as the pa
perso had been with the elders. Be-
Sides writing constantly for Harp
els Magazine, Atlantic Monthly.
Riverside Magazine, New York