Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/23

14 is that of the Yellowstone Lake, and the lowest, that of Holland.

In concluding this brief notice of Miss Gould and her work, it may be said she lives in the atmosphere of her own lines:—

OUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. The picture of Louise Chandler Moulton as she was described to me by one who saw her on her Wwdding-day, standing on the church porch, in the magic moment that is neither sunset nor twilight, like Helen's, her beautv shadowed in white veils, a bride blooming, blushing, full of life and love and joy, has always been a radiant vision to my mind's eye.

Hardly more than a child though she was—her school-days just six weeks over—she had then printed one book, and had written another, "Juno Clifford," a novel, issued anonymously a few months after her marriage to William Topham Moulton, the publisher of a weekly paper to which she had been a contributor.

From the beginning she was a child of genius: it was only through the intuitive force of genius that she was able to know the hearts of men and women as she did at that very early period of her life — a genius that has ever since grown steadily as day grows out of dawn, and that reached its culmination in lyrics and in sonnets that have few superiors in our language.

[The daughter of Lucius L. and Louisa R. (Clark) Chandler, she was born in Pomfret, Conn. Her father was son of Charles and Hannah (Cleveland) Chandler, and was descended from William^ Chandler, an early settler of Roxbury, Mtuss., through his son John, who was about two years of age when the family came from F^ngland. John^ Chandler in 1686 removed from Roxbury, Mass., to Woodstock, Conn. He was one of the twelve Roxbury men who bought the territory known as Mashamoquet (now Pomfret), he being one of the six grant(*es in May, 16K6. His wife, Elizabeth Doughis, was the daughter of William Douglas, who was born in 1610, "without doubt in Scotland," came to New England in 1640, and in 1660 settled in New London, Conn., where he was a deacon of the church.

Mrs. Hannah Cleveland Chandler was born at Pomfret in 1783, daughter of Solomon and Hannah (Sharpe) Cleveland. Her father was a soldier in the war of the Revolution. Her mother (great-grandmother of Mrs. Moulton), described as "a woman of rare intelligence and wonderful gift of language," was a notable student of Greek literature. Solomon^ Cleveland was a descendant in^the fifth generation of Moses Cleveland, of Woburn, Mass., the immigrant progenitor of the New England family of this surname, the line being Moses,* Edward,^ Silas,^ Solomon.' Edward^ Cleveland's wife was Rebecca Paine, daughter of Elisha and Rebecca (Doane) Paine and granddaughter of Thomas and Mary^ (Snow) Paine. Mary Snow was a daughter of Nicholas^ Snow, who came over in the "Ann" in 1623, and his wife Constance, who came with her father, Stephen* Hopkins, in the "Mayflower" in 1620. See Snow, Paine, Doane, Cleveland, Chandler, and Douglas Genealogies.]

The childhood of Mrs. Moulton was one that fostered her imaginative power. Her parents still clung to the strictest Calvinistic principles. Games, dances, romances, w^ere things forbidden; and, as playmates were few, the child lived in a world of fancy. "I was lonely," she has said, "and I sought companions. What was there to do but to create them?"

Indeed, before her eighth year her active mind was creating a world of its own in a little unwritten play, which it pleased her fancy to call a Spanish drama, and with which she beguiled all the summer, filling it with personages as real and as dear to her as those she met every day. Dwelling in such surroundings, her existence and her powers were as anomalous as if a nightingale or a tropic bird of paradise were found in the nest of our home-keeping birds. Yet in her lovely mother's heart there must have been the delicate music of the song-sparrow's strain ; and never could she have carried her power so triumphantly but for the strength she inherited from her father.

The rigid Calvinism of the family had