ROSA BOWER: A COLLECTION OF Essays and Miscellanies. THE BOWER. WILL you come, gentle reader, to my bower, and take a seat by my side, and let us commune with nature and with ourselves? The place is beautiful-beautiful as ideal visions of fairy-land. Its influences are soothing as dreams of love. To reach the sequestered retreat I, many years ago, with the fair and gentle being, "Who unto my youth was given, More than all things else to love me,” and the sweet little ones whom God had given us, and whose smiles threw sunshine along our pathway, wandered many a weary day, and compassed many a devious round. My cottage-home, on the Atlantic hill-side, disappeared beneath the eastern horizon. The cities of the Atlantic grew dim in the cloudy distance. The rough and rocky Kennebec, the clear and gentle Merrimac, the softly-flowing Connecticut, the magnificent Hudson, the dashing Delaware, and the long and winding Susquehanna were left behind in the "land of dreams." many a day I glided along the waters of the "blue Juniata;" I ascended the Alleghanies; I descended to the valley of the fair and lovely Ohio-"la belle riviere.", On its waters, amidst verdant hills and fairy landscapes, 1* 5 For I held my way for nearly a thousand miles. Up the meandering Wabash, amidst landscapes beautiful as were ever daguerreotyped on poet's soul; by vales lovely as Tempe or Cashmere; along fields fair as that "Of Enna, where Proserpina, gathering flowers, Was carried off;" and through groves, sweet as that of Arcadia or of "Daphne by Orontes," was I urged by the resistless power of steam, till, on one lovely morning, there lay spread out before me, in the quiet beauty of summer sunlight, the City of the Prairie. Over all the landscape was diffused a soft and mellow radiancy, a gentle, wavy light, like the dim and dreamy hues of distant mountain scenery. With eye unvailed and undimmed, I stood looking on the fairy paradise, shadowy visions of whose surpassing beauty had often flitted before the magic mirror of the soul, amidst the dreams of childhood's reverie. Midway between the City of the Prairie and the City of the Plain, on which stands Indiana's capitol, and midway between the gentle and fair Ohio and the broad and beautiful Michigan, by the side of a streamlet, whose waters run rippling by to mingle with the Wabash, smooth and softly flowing, nestles, in a cozy retreat, my summer bower. On the north may be caught faint glimpses of my vine-covered cottage, peering out among the trees, and beyond rise the steeples of the village. On the south there stretches away, in the dim distance, a shadowy valley dreaming of perpetual summer. On the east appear fields waving with the green grass and the golden harvest, and pastures cropped by lowing herds and bleating flocks. On the west rises a grand old forest of venerable and magnificent trees, whose memory reaches back to the silent and oblivious ages of the past. One of the old trees, an original denizen of the soil, throws its dense and impenetrable shade over my rural seat. Around me, clustering close, are thickets of evergreens. Here are growing, fresh and fair, as on their native plains, the pine, the fir, the spruce, and the tamarack, transplanted from my own native home on the Atlantic shore. Springing up amid the evergreens, and scattered all along the valley by the brook, are lilies of the purest white. The bright green leaves of the maple and the beech, which surround and overhang the bower, reflect from their polished surface the cheerful sunlight. Just in the vale, at the foot of the bowery dell, is a lakelet of pure, transparent water, whose quiet bosom reflects the shadows of the trees, forming a perfect daguerreotype of the sylvan scene. There are voices here, gentle reader; the voices of Nature in her gladness and love. Lots of merry crickets are chirping in the tall grass. The incessant hum of the bee is heard in the air and on the trees overhead. On a little bush by my side sits the sparrow singing to its mate on her nest in the neighboring thicket. From the fencecorner comes the plaintive monotone of the robin. From the crevice in the old stump flits the wren twittering emulous. On the topmost branch of the maple sits the mocking-bird, most tuneful of nature's warblers, leaving, in her ecstasies of melody, nothing unimitated. From the adjacent grove comes the cooing of the turtle-dove, mournful and sad. Even the pines, in their waving tassels, furnish a harp for the winds, giving out music soft, soothing, and inimitable. And is it fancy, or do I sometimes hear, mingled with the melody of nature, soothing my soul with heavenly harmony, and cheering me onward. and upward, the spirit-voice of my angel child, idol of my heart, and twin genius of my spirit, my own sweet Emma Rosabelle, whose grave, covered with violets and myrtle, is made beneath the same tree whose branches |