Page:Over the river, and other poems.djvu/25

Rh to the brother of a musical composer who desired to set it to music, gave the following account of its origin :

" The little poem to which he purposes to give musical expression was written originally on a sheet of brown wrapping-paper, in the ' hour's nooning ' at the mill, and then carried home, thrown in with other loose papers, and entirely forgotten until I came across it by accident again, while looking for something else, more than a year after."

It is stated in addition, by her mother, that the manu script came near being destroyed soon after it was written, but was happily rescued from an inglorious fate. It was left in a dress which was about to be washed, when Mrs. Priest, in emptying the pocket, found the bit of crumpled brown paper, and so saved the priceless poem which the author so strangely forgot.

It has been suggested, that she may have written other poems equal or superior to the one which made her name famous, because she destroyed very many which were never seen by any eyes but her own. " Several times she has gone to her desk, gathered up all her papers, and cast them into the fire." She did not seem to appreciate her own writings, and could not be con vinced that they had any special merit. The fact that she forgot all about " Over the River " makes it credible that other flashes of inspiration passed through water or fire.

But whatever Miss Priest wrote was her own. She