Part 13 (1/2)

In theof all its influences, Robert Dinsmore, the author of the poem I have quoted, was born, about the er son of a Laird of Achenreen fertility of Northern Ireland, had eland soh experience of Indian captivity in the oods of Maine, had settled down ae, Robert never saw a school He was a short time under the tuition of an old British soldier, who had strayed into the settlement after the French war, ”at which time,” he says in a letter to a friend, ”I learned to repeat the shorter and larger catechisms These, with the Scripture proofs annexed to them, confirmed me in the orthodoxy of my forefathers, and I hope I shall ever remain an evidence of the truth of what the wise o, and when he is old he will not depart from it'” He afterwards took lessons with one Master McKeen, who used to spendsquirrels with his pupils He learned to read and write; and the oldalso, had he not fallen in love with Molly Park At the age of eighteen he enlisted in the Revolutionary ara On his return he married his fair Molly, settled down as a farmer in Windham, formerly a part of Londonderry, and before he was thirty years of age became an elder in the church, of the creed and observances of which he was always a zealous and resolute defender Froes in his poems, it is evident that the instructions which he derived froested as needful for the unlucky lad who to his friend Hamilton:--

”Ye 'll catechise him ilka quirk, An' shore him i' hell”

In a hu's Lament, he thus describes the consternation produced in the , who, in search of his mistress, rattled and scraped at the ”west porch door:”--

”The vera priest was scared himsel', His sermon he could hardly spell; Auld carlins fancied they could sht he was some iood old age, a ho his acres with his own horny hands, and cheering the long rainy days and winter evenings with homely rhyme Most of his pieces ritten in the dialect of his ancestors, which ell understood by his neighbors and friends, the only audience upon which he could venture to calculate He loved all old things, old language, old custo letter to his cousin Silas, he says:--

”Though Death our ancestors has cleekit, An' under clods then closely steekit, We'll ue we yet wad speak it, Wi' accent glib”

He wrote sohbors, often to soothe their sorrow under doive expression to his own With little of that delicacy of taste which results froether too truthful and ination, he describes in the simplest and most direct terms the circumstances in which he found himself, and the impressions which these circus by their right names; no euphuism or transcendentalism,--the plainer and commoner the better He tells us of his farm life, its joys and sorrows, its mirth and care, with no eraceful features Never having seen a nightingale, he ht-hawk, at sunset, cutting the air above hi corn-fields and orchard-bloo which was necessary to the comfort and happiness of his home and avocation was to hi, from a poem written at the close of autumn, after the death of his wife:--

”NoBrook trace, No more with sorro the place Where Mary's wash-tub stood; No more may wander there alone, And lean upon the mossy stone Where once she piled her wood

'T was there she bleached her linen cloth, By yonder bass-wood tree Fro and her tea

That streaing and singing, Her voice could match alone”

We envy not the man who can sneer at this simple picture It is honest as Nature herself An old and lonelyyears of his wedded life Can we not look with hi itself with the leafy shadows of the bass-tree, beneath which a fair and ruddy-checked young woman, with her full, rounded arracefully to her task, pausing ever and anon to play with the bright-eyed child beside her, andwater! Alas!

as the old man looks, he hears that voice, which perpetually sounds to us all froenialDay What a plain, hearty picture of substantial coarret stored, And sauce in cellar well secured; When good fat beef we can afford, And things that 're dainty, With good sweet cider on our board, And pudding plenty;

”When stock, well housed,fire to warht to see!

It putsfor thee”

If he needs a sihter he says:--

”That er letter, The cause is not the want of matter,-- Of that there's plenty, worse or better; But like a mill Whose stream beats back with surplus water, The wheel stands still”

Soleams out occasionally from the sober decoruh sheriff of the county, who had sent to him for a peck of seed corn, he says:--

”Soon plantin' tiie us rain, An' shi+ning heat to bless ilk plain An' fertile hill, An' gar the loads o' yellow grain, Our garrets fill

”As long as I has food and clothing, An' still aet the corn--anda copy of some verses written by a lady, he talks in a sad way for a Presbyterian deacon:--

”Were she sos so sweet by nature's law, I'd reen loany, And make her tawny phiz and 'a My welcome crony”

The practical philosophy of the stout, jovial rhymer was but little affected by the sour-featured asceticism of the elder He says:--

”We'll eat and drink, and cheerful take Our portions for the Donor's sake, For thus the Word of Wisdom spake-- Man can't do better; Nor can we by our labors make The Lord our debtor!”

A quaintly characteristic correspondence in rhyore, evidently ”birds o' ane feather,” is still in existence Thethe epistle of his old friend, commences his reply as follows:--

”Did e'er a cuif tak' up a quill, Wha ne'er did aught that he did well, To gar the er, Nae doubt ye 'll say 't is that daft chiel Old Dite McGregore!”