Page:Over the river, and other poems.djvu/21

{{rh||MEMOIR.} 15 }} Lincoln," an alliterative pseudonyme, after the fashion of the time, became familiar to a portion of the reading public, while the name of the real author was unknown. Yet that quiet life was full of an inner history, the history of a mind, heart, and soul, which labored with a peculiar intensity, as is proved by nearly every thing which found expression in verse. The life of the author, in this case, is to be read in her writings. Judged by these, she had a strong, clear mind, a heart full of the deepest and sweetest sensibilities, and a moral and spiritual nature of the purest and most elevated type.

Without being a precocious child, she evinced supe riority to the ordinary run of children in many ways which mothers and other members of a family are apt to observe, " She learned all the letters of the alphabet, great and small," writes her mother, " in the summer before she was two years old." As she was born in December, we are left to infer that she had learned the alphabet when not much over a year and a half in age. At this early date she would "tell her age, and repeat short verses." It is reported of her, when about two years old, that " nothing ever pleased her like hearing reading and singing." No instance is remembered when she ever tore a good-looking book, articles which most children treat with little regard. While still in childhood