Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1875 — Alice Clary’s Love. [ARTICLE]

Alice Clary’s Love.

L. M. C. furnishes the New York Evening Pott with some reminiscences of the life of Alice Cary, whose fame as a poet stands high in the annals of American letters, and among the rest sketches this story of Alice’* early but blighted love: Clovernook graveyard is a small inclosure near the road, shaded by tall locusts mid wild-cherry trees. It has an air of abandonment and neglect, but nature has taken it kindly to her heart. The graves are overgrown with ivy and long grass, and blackberry vines twist about the mossyheadstones. The tallest monument is in memory of John Lewis, a native of Denmark. His farm adjoined that of the Carys, and his widow became the second wife of Robert Cary, the first Mrs. Cary having died when Alice was about fourteen years old. She—Mrs. Lewis—sold the greater part oi her farm to a gentleman from the East This was Charles Cheney, brother to the silk manufacturers of that name. He had previously been engaged in business at Providence, R. 1., but an unfortunate speculation had swept away his property, and it was by the aid of his brothers that he was enabled to buy the farm near Clovernook. He purposed here to engage in the culture of the mulberry tree and feed silkworms. He was accompanied by his wife, who was an invalid and did not long survive her removal to the West Alice Cary was a shy, awkward schoolgirl when she first knew Mr. Cheney, and had never before seen any person so refined, so gentlemanly and well-bred. He was greatly superior to the people among whom he took up his residence; not that his mental endowments were very great or better, perhaps, than those of some of his neighbors, bat his had been brought out by education, aud found expression in graceful manners and polished phrases, while theirs were imbedded in the clownish fetters from which their position and circumst n»c i©>>f life had in no way tended to free them. Chiefly through his instrumentality in the course of a few. years the neighborhood of Clovernook was changed from a thinly-inhabited and illcultivated district to one abounding with vineyards and orchards, and dotted with public edifices and private residences, surrounded by green lawns fringed with clipped hedges. As years passed on the shy, rustic school-girl grew to womanhood, and the proud and cultured neighbor of whom she had stood in snch awe, learning of her thirst for knowledge, lent her books from his library and encouraged her efforts toward self-improvement Their appreciation of the same authors formed a bond of kindred tastes between them, and was the beginning of a more intimate acquaintance and interchange of thought and feeling. For him it wap intellectual companionship and the charm of contact with a fresh, growing mind, filled with beautiful thoughts and earnest aspirations. For her it was an education of mind and heart, the revelation of a new life, the “ opening of a sealed fountain in her bosom.” What wonder if he who was her ideal realized, the highest type of manhood she had ever known, should win her heart? He did win it, and in the highest sense of the phrase she never loved another. In every case of heart-history there is much that is sacred to those immediately concerned, and should never pass beyond them into the cold and curious world.

It all happened many years ago, and the particulars of the story are known to few. Suffice it to say that this was the first and only love of Alice Cary’s life, and it ended there. Mr. Cheney went East and married, and she read the announcement in a newspaper. Later she left dovemook, around which clung so many bitter-sweet memories, and went to New York, where she made her home during the remainder of her life, and gathered around her a circle of appreciative friends, many of them gifted and great. Though many prized her worth and sought her hand, she never forgot the love-dream of her early womanhood. Around it clustered all the bright and tender associations of youth, and as she receded from it and- her hair grew gray, it “ gathered # a pathos from the years and graves between.” Her life, though Messed with the companionship of noble minds and loving hearts, was in one sense solitary and incomplete, for she missed the crowning blessing of womanhood, the love that wonld have been at once her inspiration and reward, and have satisfied the long, ings of her nature as no personal achievement or fame could have done. Three young boys were arrested at Yamasha, Quebec, a few days ago foe piling logs on * railroad track “to see the cars jump,” the cars “jumping” and killing some twenty people. On account of their tender years they were held irresponsible and discharged.