Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1890-11-27
a Story Of Early Colo
NAL Days.
BY CHARLES G. HAHN.
CHAPTER VI.

~S-bEiNa IZ% rich golden-rod OF
22Iz fertile hpfo pr # s9f ian ahd
So Dorothea grew in the forests of the
new world, not very warm, not with
flaming colors, or a luxuriance Of pas
sion, but in her face and in her soul were
the tints of heaven. Her eyes were q
clear brown, innocent and trusting, and
on her lips lowered a perpetual summer
calm. Right as to heart and brain, she
won her way among the stern Puritans
with an extreme gentIeness, and yet early
she learned to endure and to obey. Even
while girl. one could see that she would
be queen in marriage and a most per-
feet wife. Unconsciously, in her eyes
were depths clear and full of love for her
parents and for her lover. And yet she
had ever one black shadow at her feet
the memory of her father and the sus-
picion that she herself was following in
his footsteps. And as the years passed,
the shadow not only lay at her feet, but
rose and hoated over her. In these days
she sometimes murmured to herself a
passage from an old book which she had
found in her fathers chest:
Mother Mary. hear me and give me
grace TO bear my heavy load"
She meant it as q cry to her own moth
er, and did not know that the words were
a prayer to the mother of God.
Nevertheless, perhaps the Blessed
Virgin heard her.
Traces of her early life with her father
were never effaced. In fact there were
Ftinees in her character which were ever
oeppearing like the recurring colors of the
evening twilight, and DR.. Lennox never
stroTe to blot them out. When mingling
with the pioneers or their staid, young
old children, she could be as digniied and
prosaic as they. But when they were
gone and she was alone, or with her
adopted father, all the influences and les
sons of her early life appeared. She
looked upon the trees of the forest and
the flowers growing at their feet, at the
running brook and the stars and the
clouds overhead as the real things of the
world, and hence nearer and dearer to
her than men.
So ofttimes she was content to sit for
hours beneath some tall oak tree, which,
thick-leaved, sighed over her little head
with an ancient melody as old as trees or
the hills or nature. At such times there
appeared in her soul those characteristics
which were like golden tints in the sky,
coming at the close of the day, as the
hustle and worry of the world were dying
away and the peace OF the evening twi-
light reigned.
A glorious child dreaming alone
In silken folds, on yielding down,
With the hum of swarming bees
Into dreamful slumbers lulld
Zone warm summer days she would
wander knee deep through the meadow
grass, along the little DrOOE winch cir
cled half around the town. No bird
would sing on these days, nor would any
cloud pass across the sky, and the day
would increase from heat 80 heat. Those
were dreamy days. which q poet or a
painter would love, and at such times all
of Dorothea's early lessons in nature
would come back to her. She would bend
over q little struggling flower, hidden by
the tall ,grLss, and speak to it as If it
were 9 friend Even the coarse weeds
in which none else, unless it may have
been the Doctor, could see~ aught bat
ugliness and Adams curse, appealed to
her. The broad meadow wss great bed
and she drew the tops of the. grass ten
derry between her fingers and dreamed
OH who knows of what child dreams at
such timer On days when there were
clouds in the sky and q breeze was
blowing the shadow of the former
fell upon and fosted over the bending
grass and she imagined the field to be a
miniature sea.
And to sit there, half hidden by the
grass, and look out at the tall treetops
which surrounded the village. and out
into the sky beyond AMI overhead. An!
what quiet happiness that brought, and
what fancies, quiet and dreamful, filed
the childs mind. There was g lonesome
mess in it, too. that was not altogether
unpleasant. For somewhere beyond
those woods she belle ed her father lived,
and the same sky was over them both
There was a little poem, OF rather the
,4ragmsnt Of poem, which her father had