THE FIRESIDE AT " FAR AWAY." 69 



cannot attain it. If to be a literary woman, I have not sufficient 

 education. If a mere waif floating on the stream of life, the very- 

 animals on the banks are better than I." She reached out for any- 

 thing she could do, and turned for some recourse against that 

 nothingness that swallowed her up. 



At length, one day, the first time coming abroad after an illness, 

 her mind drank in that confused blending of sound, colour, motion, 

 and fragrance, that is so pervading in the early spring, and which 

 affects the nerves after illness with so acute a pain. The buds 

 seemed expanding with an inherent instinct, the birds seemed 

 arranging their social affairs with a high intelligence, which had 

 never struck her before. There was a relation of one to another, 

 a connection to herself, and an apparentness of creation by that 

 Higher Eelative, that had just raised her from her feeble bed, that 

 seemed never so plain or so beautiful as now. The more she 

 pondered and examined, the greater seemed the field of thought. 

 She was not idle now. Body and mind grew strong together. 

 No one slighted her homely face in the fields, and with what aid 

 from books that could be had, she wandered forth a thinking, 

 happy, labouring, achieving student. At last a field was before 

 her ; how strange, it had been under her eyes from childhood ! 



The fire was kindled in the planter's house, for it was a chilly 

 night ; the rain commenced to fall after our return from the hunt, 

 and from the pitch-pine branches " the light fell off in hoary flakes," 

 painting bright the heavy furniture of the room, and belching from 

 the chimney above the house, as from a smelting furnace. The 

 room was adorned with implements of the chase, antlers, and rude 

 stores of goods, and yet there were marks of a gentler taste in an 

 engraving primitively framed, stuffed birds, and gracefully-disposed 

 Indian weapons, decorated the walls. The interior of the mansion 

 was more comfortable than its rough and dismantled exterior pro- 

 mised ; and from its lonely situation, over sixty miles from any 

 town and more than a dozen from any house, it had been appro- 

 priately named " Far Away." The door stood open, the negroes sat 

 on the sill, drinking in the conversation and laughing at every 

 joke, while within, Lou Jackson, her father, and his guests, sat or 

 reclined around the room as best they could find places. 



