Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1895-03-15

-~r~ = fertile prairie lauC6.
So DOrothea grew in the fore is OF the
new world, not very warm, not with
daming colors, or q lnXurlance or pas
sion, but in her face and in her soul we're
the tints of heaven. Her eyes were
clear brown, innocent and trusting, and
on her lips hovere perpetual summer
calm. Right as to heart and brain, she
won her way among the stern Purltans
with an extreme gentieness, and yet efrly
she learned to endure and TO obev. Even
while girl. one could see that she would
be a queen in marriage and most rer-
feet wife. Uncons eiously, in her eyes
were depths clear and full of love for her
parents and for her lover. And yes she
had ever one black shadow at her feet
the memory of her father and the sus-
picion that she herself was following III
his footsteps. And as the years passed,
the shadow not only lay at her feet, bit
rose and flo ted 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. he II me and give me
grace to bear my heavy load.
She meant it as a cry to her own moth
er, AMI did not know that the words were
prayer 10 the mother of God.
Nevertheless, perhaps the Blessed
Virgin heard her.
Traces of her early life with her father
were never etfacel. In fact there we're
tinoes in her character which were ever
appearing like the recurring colors Of the
evening twilight, and DR.. Lennox never
strove to blot them out. When mingling
with the pioneers or their staid, young
old children, she could be as d. nfied 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 SKI,
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 lulpd.
Some warm summer days she would
wander knee deep through the meadow
grass, along the little brook which cir
cled half around the town. No bird
would sing on these days, nor woald any
cloud pass across the sky, and the day
would increase from heat to heat. Those
we're dreamy days, which a poes or a
painter would love, and at such times all
of Dorothea's carly lessons in nature
would come back to her. She would bend
over little struggling flower, hidden by
the tall grass, and speak to it as If it
we're friend. Even the coarse weeds,
IN which none e,se, unless it may have
been the Doctor, could see aught but
ugliress and Adams curse, appealed to
her The broad meadow was great bed,
anG she drew the tops Of the grass ten
derly between her fingers and dreamed
OH wlo knows of what child dreams at
such a lime? On days when there were
clouds IL the sky and breeze was
blowing The shadow of the formOl
fell upon snd flo ted over the bending
grass aud 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 AM overhead. All!
what quiet happiness that brought, and
what fancies, quiet and dreamfuI, filed
the child's mind There was lonesome
ness in it, too. that was not altogether
unnleasant. For somewhere beyond
those woods she belle ed her father llyed'
and the same sky was over them both.
There was little poem, or rather the
fragment Of poem, which her father had