Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/451

 EMELINE H. JOHNSON. Emeline H. Brown was bom at Haverhill, New Hampshire, May seventh, 1826, being the youngest of five daughters of Jabez and Mary Brown, who removed from Haverhill to Massillon, Ohio, in 1828, at which place Mr. Brown died. In 1836 Mrs. Brown removed to Wooster, Ohio, starting a select school, the first successful enterprise of the kind in that place, where she remained a teacher for eighteen years. The education of Emeline was, therefore, acquired entirely at home, and was only such as any good English school furnishes. Nature had, however, ordained her a poet, and no educational advantages could have done more than to bring out and help to adorn her native genius. United to quick and tender sensibilities in her disposition, was a brilliant wit, and the keenest perception of the ridiculous. This latter quality was so strong as sometimes to bring her under the displeasure of her acquaintances, who mistook for malicious satire the irresistible relish for humor which compelled her to touch up their peculiarities with her pungent wit. But those who knew her well, knew that her soul was too lofty and too passionate, to be attainted Avith malice, even of the merry sort. Her spirit was, as she herself expressed it, " moulded into being from the elements of fire ; " and too early, alas ! it consumed its frail and beautiful tenement. In 1845, at the age of nineteen, she was married to Perry Johnson of Wooster, and was left a widow at twenty-one. From the hour that she gave up the hope of her husband's life, the arrow had entered her own soul. Neither health, nor gayety, nor even cheerfulness, ever returned to her after the faithful but fruitless long watch- ings by his dying bed. The pale, drooping but beautiful, face of the heart-stricken widow, will never be forgotten by those who knew her then, for the hopelessness of incurable grief was too plainly imprinted upon it to be mistaken, or afterward forgot- ten. Under this weight of sorrow the hfe-chords gradually stretched and parted ; and on the eighth of April, 1850, the long weariness was over, the grieving spirit set at rest by death. One child, a beautiful boy, was left, but only for a little season, for in less than a year from her death, the orphaned mfant was laid beside his parents. Such is the history, in simple terms, of one born with gifts which might have graced the noblest circles of the witty and the wise : in these few words no image can be giA^en of the thrilling hearwife which was experienced by the patient and enduring spirit. No thought of being a " literary woman " was ever entertained by the subject of this sketch. Her girlhood was passed, as girlhood usually is, in mere dreamings of the future ; and when the stern reahties of life had come upon her, the terrible and startling meaning left her little leisure for the use of the pen, even had her mind not been so deeply absorbed in her love and her sorrow, as it was. The last productions of her pen, written from her sick-bed, appeared in the ^^ American Courier" published in Philadelphia, under the signature of "Lilly Layton," and their identity was not known until after her death, when the original copies were found in her portfolio. (435')