Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/368

Rh silently to himself. She falls thoughtlessly into his bosom, and is swallowed up there. The rushing, dancing Schenandoah, is no longer heard of, no longer seen; it is all over with her gay temper; it is all over with herself; she has become Mrs. Potomac. Mr. Potomac, however, extends himself with increasing, swelling waters, and equally calmly, but more majestically, continues his course to Washington, and thence to the sea. Poor little Schenandoah! I am fond of her, and feel sympathy for her; and though I gladly saw from the heights the Potomac advancing onward in calm, profound sweeps, through the western highlands, I yet preferred going down into the valley south of the mountain, where the Schenandoah, still a maiden, dances onward among the rocks which crowned her bacchante head with the most beautiful garlands and crowns of foliage, or beneath lofty trees, in which flocks of little yellow birds, like canary birds, flew and twittered gaily. The country was here infinitely pretty and romantic, and the waters of the Schenandoah although shallow, are as clear as crystal.

Lower down the river on this same side is a gun manufactory, which just at this moment is in a state of great activity. The houses of the work-people lie on the hillside, small houses, well-built, all alike, and from which the views were very beautiful.

“We are all equal here,” said a young woman to me, in one of these dwellings, into which I had gone to rest; “our circumstances are all alike.”

They were very good; and yet she did not look happy. We sate in a parlour where everything was comfortable, and even elegant. The young woman had a little boy in her arms, and yet she was not happy; that was evident. Something in her mild, sorrowful expression, told me that she was not happily married.

In another house I made the acquaintance of an older woman, whose countenance bore the impress of the