Transcribed for Project Gutenberg by Susan L. Farley.
Project Gutenburg/Make A Difference Day Project 1999.
by James Lane Allen
"O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence. . .
. . . feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused
And in diffusion evermore intense.
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world."
THE middle of a fragrant afternoon of May in the green wilderness of
Kentucky: the year 1795.
High overhead ridges of many-peaked cloud—the gleaming, wandering Alps ofthe blue ether; outstretched far below, the warming bosom of the earth,throbbing with the hope of maternity. Two spirits abroad in the air,encountering each other and passing into one: the spirit of scentless springleft by melting snows and the spirit of scented summer born with theearliest buds. The road through the forest one of those wagon-tracks thatwere being opened from the clearings of the settlers, and that wound alongbeneath trees of which those now seen in Kentucky are the unworthysurvivors—oaks and walnuts, maples and elms, centuries old, gnarled,massive, drooping, majestic, through whose arches the sun hurled down onlysome solitary spear of gold, and over whose gray-mossed roots some coldbrook crept in silence; with here and there billowy open spaces of wild rye,buffalo grass, and clover on which the light fell in sheets of radiance;with other spots so dim that for ages no shoot had sprung from the deepblack mould; blown to and fro across this wagon-road, odours of ivy,pennyroyal and mint, mingled with the fragrance of the wild grape; flittingto and fro across it, as low as the violet-beds, as high as the sycamores,unnumbered kinds of birds, some of which like the paroquet are long sincevanished.
Down it now there came in a drowsy amble an old white bob-tail horse, hispolished coat shining like silver when he crossed an expanse of sunlight,fading into spectral paleness when he passed under the rayless trees; hisforetop floating like a snowy plume in the light wind, his unshod feet,half-covered by the fetlocks, stepping noiselessly over the loamy earth; therims of his nostrils expanding like flexible ebony; and in his eyes thatlook of peace which is never seen but in those of petted animals.
He had on an old bridle with knots of blue violets hanging, down at hisears; over his broad back was spread a blanket of buffalo-skin; on thisrested a worn black side-saddle, and sitting in the saddle was a girl, whomevery young man of the town not far away knew to be Amy Falconer, and whommany an old pioneer dreamed of when he fell asleep beside his rifle and hishunting-knife in his lonely cabin of the wilderness. She was perhaps thefirst beautiful girl of aristocratic birth ever seen in Kentucky, and thefirst of the famous train of those who for a hundred years since havewrecked or saved the lives of the men.
Her pink calico dress, newly starched and ironed, had looked so pretty toher when she had started from home, that she had not been able to bear thethought of wearing over it this lovely afternoon her faded, mud-stainedriding-skirt; and it was so short that it showed, resting against thesaddle-skirt, her little feet loosely fitted into new bronze morocco shoes.On her hands she had drawn white half-hand mittens of home-knit; and on herhead she wore an enormous white scoop-bonnet, lined with pink and tied underh