Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/420

AMANDA L. RUTER DUFOUR. Among the early pioneer preachers of the Territory of Indiana, few were more esteemed, or will be longer remembered, than Calvin W. Ruter. Born in Vermont, and left, in early childhood, in humble circumstances, to the care of a widowed mother, wlio was a native of England and a woman of unconquerable energy, the young lad souglit, in self-culture, the advantages of education which fortune had denied him. He used to gather brushwood in the Vermont mountains, and arrange it as torches, by the light of which he was wont to study throughout the long winter evenings. At the age of twenty-four he emigrated to the then frontier settlements of the West, and there entered upon the laborious life, full of hardships and privations, of an itin- erant minister of the Methodist Episcopal Clmrch. Trained in a stern school and inheriting all the vigor and perseverance of his mother, he was one of those men who, without a taint of intolerance, have that about them out of which martyrs are made. Earnest in his own opinions, he yet spoke with charity of all other sects, and was in the habit of inviting preachers of other denominations to share the hospitality of his house, never claiming Methodism as the exclusive road to heaven. In 1821 he married Harriet, daughter of a once wealthy Virginian, Michael Haas, of German origin, who, from conscientious motives, had manumitted all his slaves and emigrated to Indiana. Barbara, one of these slaves, threw her free papers into the fire, followed the fortunes of her master, and died in the family. In the daughter, Mr. Ruter obtained a wife of the most benevolent character, much of whose life was spent in deeds ofl*charity. To them was born, in Jefferson ville, Indiana, and in the year 1822, Amanda Lou- isa, the subject of the present biographical notice. The years of her earliest child- hood were spent on a farm near Lexington, Indiana. Adjacent to the house was a beautiful woodland pasture, in which had been rudely constructed a rustic bower ; and there the solitary child used to sit alone for hours, while rhymes came to her even before she could read. When she was eight years of age, her father removed to New Albany, where her youth was passed. There the picturesque "Knobs" were her play-ground, and the scene of her earliest inspirations. Conflicting circumstances conspired materially to influence her character. On the one hand her father, a man of melancholy temperament and studious habits, required jiUsolute quiet in his household; and this gave the child many hours for lonely reflec- tion and for the study of books. She began to commit her own thoughts to paper, aad these usually assumed a poetical form. She possessed herself of some elementary Latin works from her father's library, and sought to teach herself that language. But her mother's health faihng, so that many of the domestic duties devolved on her child, she was fain to lock away from the young student not only books but writing materials, lest the household cares should be neglected. » ( 404 )