Читать книгу Authors and Writers Associated with Morristown - Julia Keese Colles - Страница 30

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Mrs. Augustus W. Cutler has kindly given us the following monograph:

"In a Memorial of the late Mrs. Mary Lee Demarest occurs the following passage: 'For two hundred and fifty years, the English readers of the Bible were obliged to content themselves with the phrase, 'They seek a country'. It was not the whole thought. It was reserved for a corps of learned revisers to light upon the happy phrase, 'They are seeking a country of their own'.' But a score of years before the wise grammarians reached this line, a youthful poetess, seeing and greeting the Heavenly promise from afar, wrote simply and sweetly:

"'I'll ne'er be fu' content, until mine een do see The shining gates o' Heaven, an' my ain countree'.

"This youthful poetess was Mary Lee, afterwards Mrs. T. F. C. Demarest.

"Before her marriage, in 1870, she spent several years in Morristown and became identified with the place and its interests; and there are many persons living here who remember her sweet face and gentle ways.

"A taste for the Scotch dialect is said to have been acquired from an old Scotch nurse who lived a long time in the family, when the children were young. The girl caught it so completely, that when deeply moved, she was wont to drop into it, for the more vigorous expression of her feelings. 'Somehow', said she, 'the Scotch is more homely, less formal to me'. Thus, in the poem alluded to, could the thoughts contained in it, have been expressed as beautifully and tenderly in the mother tongue?

"Again, there is a little poem in the same dialect, entitled 'My Mither', which appeals to every heart.

"Though many of her poems and prose writings are of a devotional character, yet she had a keen sense also of the humorous side of life as the verses entitled 'Allen Graeme', will testify.

"Mrs. Demarest traveled extensively throughout our own country, and also abroad. Two volumes of her writings have been published—one entitled 'Gathered Writings', a collection of short stories, fragments of foreign travel and reflections".