Part 26 (2/2)
The pioneer women are of sterling worth and character. The patience, courage, purity and steadfastness which were developed in them presents a moral resemblance to the holy women of old.
Pioneer men are generally liberal in their views, as was witnessed when the suffrage was bestowed upon the women of Was.h.i.+ngton Territory several years ago.
CHAPTER Va.
A NATIVE DAUGHTER, BORN IN FORT DECATUR.
Madge Decatur Denny was born in Fort Decatur, in the year of the Indian war, on March 16th, 1856; to those sheltering walls had the gentle mother, Louisa Boren Denny, fled on the day of battle. Ushered into the world of danger and rude alarms, her nature proved, in its development, one well suited to the circ.u.mstances and conditions; courage, steadfastness and intrepidity were marked traits in her character. Far from being outwardly indicated, they were rather contrasted by her delicate and refined appearance; one said of her, ”Madge is such a dainty thing.”
Madge was a beautiful child, and woman, too, with great sparkling eyes, abundant golden-brown curls and rosy cheeks. What a picture lingers in my memory!--of this child with her arms entwined about the slender neck of a pet fawn, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with love and laughter, her burnished hair s.h.i.+mmering like a halo in the sunlight as she pattered here and there with her graceful playfellow.
The Indians admired her exceedingly, and both they and the white people of the little settlement often remarked upon her beauty.
In early youth she showed a keen intellectuality, reading with avidity at ten years such books as Irving's ”Life of Was.h.i.+ngton,” ”History of France,” ”Pilgrim's Progress,” Sir Walter Scott's ”Lay of the Last Minstrel” and ”Lady of the Lake.” From that time on she read every book or printed page that fell in her way; a very rapid reader, one who seemed to take in a page at a few glances, she ranged happily over the fields of literature like a bright-winged bird. Poetry, fiction, history, bards, wits, essayists, all gave of their riches to her fresh, inquiring young mind.
The surpa.s.sing loveliness and grandeur of the ”world in the open air”
appealed to her pure nature even in extreme youth; her friends recall with wonder that when only two and a half years of age she marked the enchantment of a scene in Oregon, of flowery mead, dark forest and deep canyon, under a bright June sky, by plucking at her mother's gown and lisping, ”Look! mother, look! so pitty!” (pretty).
[Ill.u.s.tration: DAUGHTERS OF D. T. AND LOUISA DENNY
Emily Inez Madge Decatur Anna Louisa Mrs. Abbie Denny-Lindsley]
And such a lover of flowers! From this same season when she gathered armfuls of great, golden b.u.t.tercups, blue violets, scarlet columbines, ”flags” and lilies from the sunny slopes of the Waldo Hills, through her youth, on the evergreen banks of Puget Sound where she climbed fearlessly about to pluck the purple lupine, orange honeysuckle, Oregon grape and sweet wild roses, was her love of them exemplified. Very often she walked or rode on horseback some distance to procure the lovely lady's slipper (Calypso borealis), the favorite flower of the pioneer children.
A charming letter writer, she often added the adornment of a tiny group of wild flowers in the corner, a few yellow violets, fairylike twin-flowers or lady's slippers.
At one time she had a large correspondence with curious young Eastern people who wished to know something of the far Northwest; to these she sent accurate and graphic descriptions of tall trees, great mountains, waterfalls, lakes and seas, beasts, birds and fishes. She possessed no mean literary talent; without her knowledge some of her letters strayed into print. A very witty one was published in a newspaper, cut out and pasted in the sc.r.a.pbook of an elocutionist, and to her astonishment produced as a ”funny piece” before an audience among whom she sat, the speaker evidently not knowing its author. A parody on ”Poe's Raven” made another audience weep real tears in anguished mirth.
Every felicitous phrase or quaint conceit she met was treasured up, and to these were added not a few of her own invention, and woe betide the wight who accompanied her to opera, concert or lecture, for her _sotto voce_ comments, murmured with a grave countenance, were disastrous to their composure and ”company manners.”
It must be recorded of her that she gave up selfish pleasures to be her mother's helper, whose chief stay she was through many years. In her last illness she said, with much tenderness, ”Mother, who will help you now?”
Madge was a true _lady_ or _loaf-giver_. Every creature, within or without the domicile, partook of her generous care, from the pet canary to the housedog, all the human inhabitants and the stranger within the gates.
Moreover, she was genuine, nothing she undertook was slighted or done in a slipshod manner.
Her taste and judgment were accurate and sound in literature and art; her love of art led her to exclaim regretfully, ”When we are dead and gone, the landscape will bristle with easels.”
A scant population and the exigencies of the conditions placed art expression in the far future, yet she saw the vast possibilities before those who should be so fortunate as to dwell in the midst of such native grandeur, beauty and richness of color.
Like many other children, we had numerous pets, wild things from the forest or the, to us, charming juvenile members of the barnyard flocks.
When any of these succ.u.mbed to the inevitable, a funeral of more or less pomp was in order, and many a hapless victim of untoward fate was thus tearfully consigned to the bosom of Mother Earth. On one occasion, at the obsequies of a beloved bird or kitten, I forget which, Madge, then perhaps six years of age, insisted upon arranging a litter, draped with white muslin and decorated with flowers, and followed it, as it was borne by two other children, singing with serious though tearless eyes,
”We're traveling to the grave To lay this body down, And the last word that I heard him speak Was about Jerusalem,” etc.
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