"Then!" Hush; if I go at all, (It will make them stare and shrink, It will look so strange at a Fancy Ball,) I will go as Myself, I think! MISS NELLY MARSHALL. THE subject of this sketch is the daughter of the distinguished General Humphrey Marshall, of Kentucky, celebrated in the annals of the South as a soldier and a statesman. She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in the year 1847. From her earliest childhood, Miss Marshall's intellectual development was remarkable, and her first compositions, though, as was natural, abounding in the crudities that mark the early efforts of all young writers, foretold that mental power and strength which have since won for her so many warm admirers and true friends. But those abilities which, in another, would have been carefully and tenderly nurtured, were, in her, subjected to the pruning-knife of opposition, and hence her talent may be said to have grown like the prairie-rose, climbing and clinging and blossoming at its own sweet will. Reared in the strictest seclusion, and allowed only the freest communion with Nature, she has grown into womanhood with the trusting confidence of childhood in her heart and beautifying her character. She is described as petite in stature, delicately proportioned, and with large gray eyes and wavy light-brown hair. Miss Marshall is perhaps one of the most popular writers in the South and West, although, as yet, her intellectual power is, as it were, undeveloped. Her friends claim and expect more marked manifestations of talent than she has yet given, and, judging by what this young lady has already accomplished, we think we may safely assert that they will not be disappointed. The circumstances that led Miss Marshall to abandon the retirement in which she had hitherto lived, were very sad. The war, which brought devastation and desolation to so many homes in Kentucky, passed by "Beechland" with an unsparing hand. Unexpected trials, sickness, death, adversity, assailed that once merry household; and as a member of the shadowed and grief-stricken circle, Miss Marshall was compelled to resort to her pen, to stand in the breach between those most dear to her and misfortune. Miss Marshall's first volume was published in 1866, "Gleanings from Fireside Fancies," by Sans Souci. "As By Fire," a novel, published in New York in 1869, was successful -giving promise of future success. At Frankfort, Kentucky, February 13th, 1871, Miss Marshall was married to Mr. McAfee. Will he forever be haughty and cold? Has the bright past no brightness for him? If this dark knowledge of misery be mine; If the hope of his truth, because brightest, be fleetest: And of all Love's embraces thine own shall be sweetest! ALDER-BOUGHS. Shake down, oh, shake down your blossoms of snow, Melting its ice into passionate tears: Tears that must flow like a wide gulf between Days that are dead as the dead in their graves; And as we bend o'er the cold forms of those Who have gone early to Death's sombre sleep, Folding their hands as to welcome repose, Thus have I come o'er these dead days to weep. So bend low, oh, bend low! alder-boughs green, Will I your snow-blooms and verdant leaves see; I pray God they'll blossom and fade over me! FEMALE WRITERS OF THE SOUTH. A WOMAN'S HEART. From "As BY FIRE." Fanny Evesham was jealous as Gulbeyez, and the bitterness of her indignation against beautiful, innocent Electra amounted almost to passion. But it was not a jealousy prompted by love. It was simply the gangrene of wounded vanity, that her husband should not find her so irresistible that disloyalty to her charms would be impossible. Woman's heart is a deep and wonderful mystery, and it is not for the world, with the presumption of a Dædalus, to attempt to solve it by a process of metaphysical or philosophical investigation. Daedalus was ingenious artist enough to make the labyrinth of Crete, but the intricacy of a woman's emotions would be a riddle which I question if Edipus himself could solve. In unhappiness of the heart they are seldom faithful to themselves! In the hour of physical or social trials they stand forth in the arena magnanimous, unflinching-nothing sordid is mingled with their enthusiasm; but let a woman's heart once resign itself to the sway of vanity, and she is already as irredeemably lost as if she trod the red-hot tesselations of the Vulcanian regions. No "Eden-born motives," no noble surroundings, no lofty altitudes, can her soul harbor or appreciate. Thenceforth she is a creature whose debasing passions will cast her from any exalted position she may occupy, or may have striven to attain. And of all errors into which she may fall, this love of flirtation, this contemptible vanity which would gratify itself at the cost of the purest and most ennobling emotions of which the heart is capable, is most defamatory to her character as a wife, a mother, or a woman. She makes herself the puppet for a mocking multitude; she blights and degrades herself by a contemptible assumption of affection which she does not in reality entertain; she pollutes the altars of love and friendship with the ashes of a dead heart; she sets an example of evil to the sweet, fresh natures about her, which will doubtless beguile many into a like commission of folly—which, after all, terminates in mortification, chagrin, repentance, and regret. Yet at this shrine of pollution Mrs. Evesham bowed herself down an humble votary, and the sin of her beguilement reared its serpent crest above her. OF GLEN ADA, NEAR HARRODSBURG, KY. E subjoin the following brief sketch of one, who, from the uneventful and subjective character of her life, protests that she is not a theme for the biographer. Florence Anderson is a Virginian by birth, a Kentuckian by adoption. Descended from families which for many generations had combined the highest attributes of scholar, soldier, and gentleman, men who from the dawn of our country's history had counted it no loss to peril all save honor in defence of that country's liberties, Miss Anderson inherited, as her birthright, a love of learning, of honor and true glory. She had no teacher but her father. Her infant steps were steadied by him, as his hand guided her onward and upward to the fair temple of Knowledge. Deeply imbued as his own mind was with the love of classic lore, it was not strange that he should teach his docile and ambitious pupil a deep sympathy with his tastes. Before a dozen summers had blossomed over her, she had read Virgil and Horace; had felt her heart thrill at the recital of the mighty deeds of heroes, had wept o'er Hector slain, and fallen Troy. In "Zenaida," Miss Anderson's earliest work, the frequent, familiar allusions to classic subjects, and the use of words of classic derivation in preference to the more rugged and vigorous Saxon, were noted as defects in her style by more than one kindly critic. The book* was written as a contribution to a little paper, edited by a sister and herself to enliven the winter evenings, in a quiet country home. Read aloud by that sister's voice of music, now mute forever, the imperfections of "Zenaida" were overlooked by its too partial judges, and the book was published before the more chastened and corrected taste of the writer had had time to prune its too great luxuriance. Its flattering reception by an indulgent public would, doubtless, have stimulated the young authoress to renewed exertion in the field of romance, had not the war absorbed her sympathies, and paled the light of the unreal by the glare of the actual. In Miss Anderson's ideal of true development, the artist is ever subordinate to the woman, the woman to the Christian. She turns from the profound speculations and beautiful theories of philosophers and sages with more confiding ♦ “Zenaida,” published by J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1859. |