Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/399

 HANNAH E. G. AREY. Hannah Ellen Grannis Aret, a native of Cavendish, Vermont, where she was born on the fourteenth day of April, 1819, began her literary career in Cleve- land, Ohio, as a contributor to the Daily Herald of that city. Her father, John Grannis, was a member of the Provincial Parliament of Canada, at the breaking out of the rebellion in 1837, and he afterward held offices of trust under the United States Government. Hannah Ellen was one of the earliest of that band of young women, now some- what numerous in this country, who pursued the course of study marked out for the claimants of a liberal education among the opposite sex. She was for several years previous to 1848, a successful and much beloved school-teacher in Cleveland. In that year she married Oliver Arey. Soon after marriage she turned her attention from teaching to editing, and has for several years conducted periodicals for the fire- side at Buffalo and New York. " The Youth's Casket," of which she was Editor, and the "Home Monthly," which she now conducts, have endeared her to many homes. In 1855 Mrs. Arey published a volume of Poems* — the introduction to which is in lines on "Myself," describing a girl who had made intimate acquaintance with trees, rocks and streams : I knew the tree where slept the crows, And, on the water's brim, I climbed among the hemlock boughs, To watch the fishes swim. I knew beside the swollen rill, What flowers to bloom would burst ; And where, upon the south-sloped hill, The berries ripened first. Each violet tuft, each cowslip green, Each daisy on the lea, I counted one by one — for they Were kith and kin to me. I knew the moles that dared to claim The banished beaver's huts ; And sat on mossy logs to watch The squirrels crack their nuts. And they winked slyly at me, too, But never fled away, For in their little hearts they knew That I was wild as they. (383
 * Household Songs and other Poems. New York : Derby & Jackson, 1855. 12mo, pp. 254.