Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/421

 1840-50.] AMANDA L. R. D U F O U R. 4(Jo After a time the daughter was sent to such a school a>;, in those early days, was to be found ; and there the avidity with which she apphed her mind to study injured her health. She persevered, however, until she had acquired all that her teachers could communicate, and had herself mastered the usual qualifications of a teacher. Of these, as her father's flock was poor and his means limited, she subsequently availed herself, keeping school at Rising Sun, in order to aid her parents and to procure, for herself, the means of purchasing the books she craved. Her childhood and youth might truly be said to have been spent in the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. Yet, withal, her early years were happy ones — happy whenever she could stray off to commune with that nature, of which the beauties pos- sessed, for her warm, poetic temperament, ever an invigorating fi-eshness and a myste- rious charm : happy, too, in the cheerful glow which a loving mother's affection shed over a quiet home. To this the daughter, in after-years, paid a grateful tribute. Amanda Enter had an early and earnest desire to travel ; to witness, in other lands, the scenes and wonders of which she had read ; and there to gather that varied knowledge and experience which at home, except through the imperfect medium of report, is beyond our reach. But her wishes were not destined to be gratified. She grew up to adult age without having once left her native State ; and there, at the age of twenty, was united in marriage to Oliver Dufour, then of New Albany. Her hus- band, like herself, was a native of Indiana — son of John Francis Dufour, from Mon- ti-eaux, near Vevay, in Switzerland. This gentleman came to the "West in 1801, when it was all a wilderness. In 1809 he settled on the spot where Yevay (Indiana) now stands, then a dense, unbroken forest; and he laid out the town in 1813, calling it after his beautiful native place, on the Leman Lake. The first cabin erected by him may still be seen on Main Cross street. He was the first settler west of the mountains who ever made wine. He sent a sample of the first vintage to Thomas Jefferson, then President. It so happened that about the same time some one had sent to the President a bottle of water from the I^Iississippi. The water and wine, both from the TTestern wilderness, were united, and wei'e drank together. Oliver Dufour, the son, is well known throughout Indiana, from his connection with Odd Fellowship. He was elected Grand Master in 1851, and in 1852 Representative to the Grand Lodge of the United States. In 1853 he was a member of the State Legislature, and in 1854 received from President Pierce an appointment in the Gen- eral Land Office. Until the removal to Washington, consequent upon this appointment, Mrs. Dufour had remained a resident of Indiana. She is emphatically, therefore, a child of the West, by birth, by education, by marriage, by residence. Her poetical talents are ex- clusively of Western culture. Add to this, that the constantly multiplying cares of an increasing family have so far engrossed her life, that they left but brief intervals of quiet leisure, either for the cultivation or the exercise of her poetical powers. StiU, under every discouragement, she wrote. " Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh." Many of her fugitive pieces graced, from time to time, the columns