to her husband, who was then in Richmond, with the cadets of the Virginia Military Institute. It was written in pencil, on the rough paper made in the Confederacy, and throbs with the pain and patriotism which then filled every Southern woman's heart.

Colonel Preston received the manuscript with delightful praise, and read it to the bronzed and bearded officers around him, every one of whom paid it the tribute of tears-rare tribute from those stalwarts! It was immediately published in Richmond, on dark paper, in dim type, costing $2,600 for the two thousand copies. Alas! all but twenty or thirty copies perished in the flames that lit the evacuation of Richmond! The poem was republished by Kelly and Piet, Baltimore, in 1866, and ran through many editions; but it is now out of print.

Four years later, Lippincott, of Philadelphia, published Mrs. Preston's first collection of poems, 'Old Songs and New'; this, too, is out of print.

In 1875, Roberts Brothers, of Boston, brought out 'Cartoons,' which, one of her best critics says, contains her ripest thought and imagery. This, and 'For Love's Sake,' from the press of A. D. F. Randolph, and 'Colonial Ballads,' published in 1887, by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, are still in the book market; as are also a volume of travel-experience called 'Monographs,' a little dialect story; "Aunt Dorothy," and a tiny volume of child hymns, 'Chimes for Church Children.' Her family hope soon to gather the best from these volumes into one final and complete collection.

No study of Mrs. Preston would be complete without having as a background the setting of her Lexington home. She loved her village home, beautified it, kept it exquisitely clean and sweet, and flung wide its doors to the streams of guests that constantly passed through them.

The Christian faith that had been her strength and hope for a long lifetime was her anchor at its end; in the last letter sent out from her sick-chamber she says: "Pray for me, that if this is to be my last illness I may go to that home from whence there is no more going out." And on March 29, 1897, after days of unconsciousness, she awoke to find herself-at Home!

Professor James A. Harrison thus sums up his "Appreciation" of his friend and fellow-craftsman in literature:

"Mrs. Preston was a true poet, whose spontaneous gift of poesy grew out of an ardent imaginative and devotional nature, cultivated to the highest degree by reading and study. Her masters in the art were first religion and enthusiasm for the beautiful; then Longfellow, Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. From all these sources the stream of poesy that naturally ran through her

nature was enriched and spiritualized. To a natural gift for rhythm and cadence beyond the usual, she added an exquisite ear for spiritual music, ever on the alert for the impalpable melodies that haunt the slopes of Parnassus, and float ethereally about its laureled clefts. Her glowing Celtic nature was all Southern in its passion and love of harmony; and though all American poets must stand behind the sovereign Poe in his supreme distinction, Mrs. Preston takes her place beside Lanier and Hayne and Timrod in fertility, wealth of fancy, culture, and rhythmical melodiousness of expression and feeling."

Ehzabeth Preston Allen.

ONLY A PRIVATE

From 'Beechenbrook; A Rhyme of the War.'

"Only a private;-and who will care
When I may pass away,-

Or how, or why I perish, or where
I mix with the common clay?
They will fill my empty place again

With another as bold and brave;

And they'll blot me out ere the Autumn rain
Has freshened my nameless grave.

"Only a private;-it matters not

That I did my duty well,

That all through a score of battles I fought,

And then, like a soldier, fell:

The country I died for-never will heed

My unrequited claim;

And history cannot record the deed,
For she never has heard my name.

"Only a private; and yet I know,
When I heard the rallying call,
I was one of the very first to go,
And ..

I'm one of the many who fall:

But, as here I lie, it is sweet to feel,
That my honor's without a stain-
That I only fought for my Country's weal,
And not for glory or gain.

"Only a private;-yet He who reads
Through the guises of the heart,
Looks not at the splendor of the deeds,
But the way we do our part;

And when He shall take us by the hand,
And our small service own,

There'll a glorious band of privates stand
As victors around the throne!"

The breath of the morning is heavy and chill,

And gloomily lower the mists on the hill;

The winds through the beeches are shivering low,
With a plaintive and sad miserere of woe:

A quiet is over the Cottage-a dread

Clouds the children's sweet faces-Macpherson is dead!

A BIT OF AUTUMN COLOR

From 'Colonial Ballads, Sonnets, and Other Verse.' Copyright, 1887, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, and used here by permission of the publishers.

Centred upon a sloping crest, I gazed

As one enchanted. The horizon's ring
Of billowy mountains, flushed with sunsetting.
Islanded me about, and held me mazed,
With beauty saturate. Never color blazed
On any mortal palette that could fling
Such golden glamour over everything
As flashed from autumn's prism, till all was hazed
With opal, amber, sapphire, amethyst,

That shimmered, mingled, dusked to steely blue.
Raptured I mused: Salvator never drew

Its faintest semblance; Turner's pencil missed
Such culmination: yet we count them true
Masters. Behold what God's one touch can do!

LADY YEARDLEY'S GUEST From 'Colonial Ballads, Sonnets, and Other Verse.'

'T'was a Saturday night, mid-winter,
And the snow with its sheeted pall
Had covered the stubbled clearings
That girdled the rude-built "Hall."
But high in the deep-mouthed chimney,
'Mid laughter and shout and din,
The children were piling yule-logs
To welcome the Christmas in.

"Ah, so! We'll be glad to-morrow."
The mother half-musing said,
As she looked at the eager workers,
And laid on a sunny head
A touch as of benediction-
"For Heaven is just as near
The father at far Patuxent

As if he were with us here.

"So choose ye the pine and holly,

And shake from their boughs the snow; We'll garland the rough-hewn rafters As they garlanded long ago— Or ever Sir George went sailing Away o'er the wild sea-foamIn my beautiful English Sussex, The happy old walls at home.”

She sighed. As she paused, a whisper
Set quickly all eyes astrain:

"See! See!"-and the boy's hand pointed-
"There's a face at the window pane!"
One instant a ghastly terror

Shot sudden her features o'er;

The next, and she rose unblenching,
And opened the fast-barred door.

"Who be ye that seek admission?
Who cometh for food and rest?
This night is a night above others
To shelter a straying guest."
Deep out of the snowy silence

A guttural answer broke:

"I come from the great Three Rivers, I am chief of the Roanoke."

Straight in through the frightened children
Unshrinking, the red man strode,
And loosed on the blazing hearth-stone,
From his shoulder, a light-borne load;
And out of the pile of deer-skins,

With look as serene and mild

As if it had been in his cradle,

Stepped softly a four-year child.

As he chafed at the fire his fingers,
Close pressed to the brawny knee,
The gaze that the silent savage

Bent on him was strange to see;
And then, with a voice whose yearning
The father could scarcely stem,
He said, to the children pointing,
"I want him to be like them!

"They weep for the boy in the wigwam:
I bring him, a moon of days,
To learn of the speaking paper;
To hear of the wiser ways
Of the people beyond the water;

To break with the plough the sod;
To be kind to papoose and woman;
To pray to the white man's God."

"I give thee my hand!" And the lady Pressed forward with sudden cheer; "Thou shalt eat of my English pudding, And drink of my Christmas beer.