author of Undine itself," etc. The proprietors of the Lake presented the writer with the freedom of the springs.

One of Mrs. Young's best productions is an essay upon the relative character of the mind of man and woman. She takes ground against the "New School lights," denying woman's mental equality in kind, though she claims it for her in degree. She has chosen Milton and his "Paradise Lost," and Mrs. Browning and her "Drama of the Exile," as illustrations of her theory. The essay is too long to give entire, and to make quotations would only be an unsatisfactory marring of the whole. The "Telegraph" has been the most frequent medium of her communications, Mr. Cushing, its editor, being the Nestor of the press in her State, and the kindly guardian of every genius in its boundaries.

The writer of this sketch is reluctant to leave her pleasant task without making some mention of the sweet atmosphere of sympathy and feeling which emanates from and surrounds Mrs. Young in her social and private life, and of the brilliant light which her genius sheds upon those who come in immediate contact with her. Not only are her conversational powers incomparable and her manners perfect, but she has that silent tact and ready understanding which brings forward the best that is in those about her, and makes them feel, after leaving her, that they have themselves shone in truer and sweeter colors than their every-day garb. She is enveloped in incense from grateful hearts day by day; she is the "comforter," the "Christian," to those who come within her orbit. In her town, and in the country surrounding, no bride is pleased with the adjustment of her orangeblossoms unless Mrs. Young's fingers have helped to arrange them; no schoolboy is satisfied with his prize until she has smiled upon it. Grief comes to be folded to her heart, and happiness begs for her smile. She has drunk herself most deeply of the cup of sorrow she has been scorched by the flames of affliction; but she has risen refreshed and strong from the bitter draught; she has come out brightened and purified, "even as refined gold" from the heat of the furnace.

In person, Mrs. Young is tall, with a commanding grace. She has beautiful dark eyes, an expressive mouth, and a soft, clear voice. Clad always in soft, black, flowing robes, and moving, as she does, like a dream, her memory haunts all who have once seen her, and her wonderful presence leaves a sense of itself wherever she has been.

ATURE has wrought such profusion of beauty over the prairies

is often too much bewildered, as he travels the rolling hills and mimic mountains about the upper tributaries of the Colorado and the Guadalupe, to decide where she has been most lavish of her exquisite touches.

But would you find yourself lost in a Western Eden, and believe that you had passed, unwitting, into the spirit-land? Then pause in your travels amid the hills of the "Rio San Marcos."

Ask you how, away in this solitude, the mocking-bird learns to sing the thousand songs she never heard of bird, or instrument, or human voice?

Answer your own question, by finding the forest, prairie, flower and foliage, the winds and waters burdened with the very spirit of song: the vocal organs of the happy bird are only the instrument through which the music gushes.

And here it was, before she was nine years old, our Texas poetess, Mollie E. Moore, first sang her tuneful songs—and, without a master other than nature's voice, learned, like her feathered friend, to sing the songs she never heard; and, like that mistress of the winged minstrels, she sang "because she could not help it." Poetry gushed from her pen as the mere instrument of utterance. She is our "Texas Mocking-bird."

Dr. Moore emigrated from the banks of the Coosa, in the State of Alabama, where "Mollie" was born, when she was a mere child, and found a home in Texas such as we have described. Here he resided till his child, the only daughter of a large family, had imbibed the elements of poesy. He could command but few advantages of education for his children beyond their home circle; but he had some books, and a taste for natural beauty and natural science. His wife, too, had a gift for song and versification, readily caught by their little darling. No bird sang, or wind sighed, or grasshopper chirruped, or prairieplume nodded, that Mollie's heart did not respond; and the passion

for natural beauty, in all its thousand phases, that she sketches now with the hand of magic, was so deeply inwoven with her very being, that she lived a kind of fairy-life during her few years on the banks of the "Rio San Marcos." But read her own sweet song of her childhood's home:

"THE RIVER SAN MARCOS."

Far o'er the hills and toward the dying day,
Set like a heart- a living heart - deep, deep
Within the bosom of its wide prairies,
Lies the valley of San Marcos. And there,
A princess, roused from slumber by the kiss
Of balmy southern skies, the river springs
From out her rocky bed, and hastens on,
Far down the vale, to give her royal hand.
In marriage to the waiting Guadalupe.

Like some grim giant keeping silent watch,
While from his feet some recreant daughter flies,
Above, the hoary mountain stands, his head
Encircled by an emerald-pointed crown

Of cedars, strong as those of Lebanon,
That bow their sombre crests, and woo the wind,
Drunken with fragrance, from the vale below.
About his brow, set like a dusky chain,
The mystic race-paths run - his amulet—
And nestled squarely 'gainst his rugged breast.

Perched quaintly 'mong the great, scarred rocks that hang
Like tombstones on the mountain-side, the nest
The falcon built still lingers, though the wing
That swept the gathering dust from off our shield
Hath long since drooped to dust!

And here, down sloping to the water's marge,
The fields, all golden with the harvest, come:
And here, the horseman, reining in his steed
At eve, will pause, and mark the village spires
Gleam golden in the setting sun, and far
Across a deeply-furrowed field will glance
With idle eye upon a stately hill,
That, girt with cedars, rises like a king
To mark the farther limit of the field.

"T was here, between the hill and river, stood

A shaded cottage: and its roof was low

And dark, and vines that twined the porch but served
To hide the blackness of its wall. But then

'T was home, and “heaven is near us in our childhood
And I was but a child; and summer days,

That since have oftentimes seemed long and sad,
Were fleeter then than even the morning winds
That sent my brother's fairy bark, well balanced,
In safety down the river's tide. Alas!

Is there, can there be aught in all the world

To soothe the sick soul to such perfect rest

As filled its early dreams? Is there no fount,
Like that of old, so madly sought by Leon,

Where the worn soul may bathe and rise renewed?
Well I remember,

Down where the river makes a sudden bend,
Below the ford, and near the dusky road,
Upon her bosom sleeps a fairy isle,
Enwreathed about with snowy alder-boughs,
And tapestried with vines that bore a flower
Whose petals looked like drops of blood —
We called it "Lady of the Bleeding Heart"-
And through it wandered little careless paths.

And o'er this living gem

The very skies seemed bluer, and the waves
That rippled round it threw up brighter spray.
Upon the banks for hours I've stood, and longed
To bask amid its shades; and when at last
My brother dragged, with wondrous care, his boat-
Rude-fashioned, small, and furnished with one oar
Across the long slope from the stately hill
Where it was built, ne'er did Columbus' heart
Beat with a throb so wild upon that shore
Unknown to any save to him, as ours

When, with o'erwearied hands and labored breath,
We steered in safety o'er the dangerous way,
And stood, the monarchs of that fairy realm!

My brother! how I wish our wayward feet
Once more could feel that lordly pride-our hearts
Once more know all their cravings satisfied!

Sweet valley of San Marcos! few are the years

That since have linked their golden hands and fled

Like spirits down the valley of the past;
And yet it seems a weary time to me!

Sweet river of San Marcos! the openings seen
Between thy moss-hung trees, like golden paths
That lead through Eden to heaven's fairer fields,
Show glimpses of the broad, free, boundless plains
That circle thee around. Thine own prairies!
How my sad spirit would exult to bathe

Its wings, all heavy with the dust of care,
Deep in their glowing beauty! How my heart,
O'ershadowed with the cloud of gloom, would wake

To life anew beneath those summer skies!

Oh, river of my childhood! fair valley-queen!
Within thy bosom yet at morn the sun
Dips deep his golden beams, and on thy tide,
At night, the stars- the silver stars - are mirrored;
Through emerald marshes yet thine eddies curl,
And yet that fairy isle in beauty sleeps,
(Like her of old who waits the wakening kiss
Of some true knight to break her magic sleep ;)
And yet, heavy with purple cups, the flags
Droop down toward the mill; but I-oh! I
No more will wander by thy shores, nor float
At twilight down thy glassy tide!-
And yet, San Marcos, when some river-flower,
All swooning with its nectar-drops, is laid
Before my eyes, its beauty scarce is seen

no more.

For tears which stain my eyelids, and for dreams
Which glide before me of thy fairy charms,

And swell my heart with longing,

Sweet river of San Marcos!

Dr. Moore afterward removed to near Tyler, in Smith County, Texas, where a more cultured association soon developed another phase of his daughter's life; and the many modest verses that never expected to see the light, but which the poet always retains with affection, as bearing with them the history of the spirit's joys in its buddings, found their way, through admiring friends, to the light they would scarcely bear without the photograph of the girlish writer to vindicate their unpretending juvenility.

It was not long (in her fifteenth year) till some of her verses found their way into the "Houston Telegraph," then under the editorship