sunset, the good farmer returned for me, and I burst into a new agony of grief. I have never forgotten that long, long day with the kind and hospitable, but wrong Phillipses. If this statement should chance to be read and remembered by them, at this far interval, I beg them to receive the thanks which the timid child neglected to give to her stranger-friends.
I had seen scarcely any children’s books except the Primer, and at the age of ten, no poetry adapted to my age; therefore, without presumption, I may claim some originality for an attempt at an acrostic on an infant, by the name of Howard, beginning—
How sweet is the half opened rose!
Oh, how sweet is the violet to view!
Who receives more pleasure from them,
Here it seems I broke down in the acrostic department, and went on—
Than the one who thinks them like you?
Yes, yes, you re a sweet little rose,
That will bloom like one awhile;
And then you will be like one still,
For I hope you will die without guile.
The Davidsons, at the same age, would, I suppose, have smiled at this poor rhyming, but in vindication of my ten-year-old-ship I must remark, that they were surrounded by the educational light of the present era, while I was in the dark age of 1805.
My education was exceedingly irregular, a perpetual passing from school to school, from my earliest memory. I drew a very little, and worked the “Babes in the Woods” on white satin, in floss silk; my teacher and my grandmother being the only persons who recognised in the remarkable individuals that issued from my hands a likeness to those innocent sufferers.
I taught myself the English guitar at the age of fifteen from hearing a schoolmate take lessons, and ambitiously made a tune, which I doubt if posterity will care to hear. By depriving myself of some luxuries, I purchased an instrument, over which my whole soul was poured in joy and sorrow for many years. A dear friend, who shared my desk at school, was kind enough to work out all my
