Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/644

M. LOUISA CHITWOOD. Quiet lives furnish slight materials for biography, except to those who, knowing intimately a poetic mind, can appreciate the delicate impulses under which it acts, or sympathize with the emotions by which it is elevated or depressed. We knew M. Louisa Chitwood only through correspondence and through her contributions to the newspapers and magazines of the "West, but we had learned to love her as one who gave promise of richest ornament to our literature, believing that, strong in liie and genius, she would grow to eminent maturity ; and when the news came that suddenly, with visions unrealized — with poems unwritten — dear friends whom she deeply loved unseen, she had been stricken by death in the morning of womanhood, we felt that the Destroyer had broken a circle through which ran some of our most dearly cher- ished friendships. Miss Chitwood was born October twenty-ninth, 1832, and died December nineteenth, 1855, at Mt. Carmel, Indiana. Early in life she exhibited unusual fondness for poetry, and at school excited the envy of her fellow-pupils by the excellence of her compositions. The first poem from her pen which appeared in print was pubUshed at Connersville, Indiana. It was highly commended as a poem from the pen of a young girl, not far in her teens, who gave evidence of being a true child of genius — whose mind, strength- ened with age and regulated by discipline, would yet add luster to American literature. Miss Chitwood did not alone give promise of excellence as a poet. Her prose sketches possess a peculiar sweetness of tone and grace of style, particularly those written for children. We think she was especially gifted as a writer for the juvenile mind. Her sympathies were active, and she had a gift in their expression, whether through poems, prose sketches, or in letters to her friends. She was most warmly cherished by many who had never seen her, as a dear correspondent, and all who have written notices of her early death, wrote with affectionate regret — not merely regret that a gifted* woman had died, but that a dear friend was lost. George D. Prentice, in announcing her decease, said : Miss Chitwood was young, but in her brief career of life, she knew something of sorrow, and her heart was both softened and strengthened by the stern discipline. She was kind and gentle and true and good — warm-hearted and high-souled— diffident and shrinking, but conscious of bright and beautiful thoughts and of strong powers, given her by God for useful purposes. Her whole liature was deeply and intensely poetical, and thus to her the whole world was full of poetry. . . . Oh, it seems a mysterious dispensation of Providence that the little amount of breath necessary to the life of a glorious young girl, is withdrawn, whilst enough of wind to make a blustering day is vouchsafed to the lungs and nostrils of the tens of thousands of the worthless and vile. Miss Chitwood v/as a regular contributor to the Lomsinlle Journal, the Ladies' Be- jwsitory, The Genius of the West, Arthurs Home Gazette, the Odd Fellows' Ark, and other papers and magazines. Mrs. Jane Maria Mead, who writes us " that her letters were overflowing with af- (628)