Then I should meet the giant grim, My voice grows weak to wind the horn:. Nathless, I met the giant grim- Yet, goddess, by the ceaseless sea Yon crescent curves o'er western groves, O sparkling life! quick Verzenay! Well, hearken, sparkling Verzenay, Daniel L. Dawson EVER SOME DAYS WITH AMÉLIE RIVES. VERY one now knows the story of how "A Brother to Dragons” was offered to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly by one somewhere designated "as a visiting friend," how he accepted it at once, with the enthusiastic remark, "The man who wrote this will never do anything stronger," how it was published anonymously and won instant appreciation, and how the public was soon after surprised to learn that a young girl living in a Virginia country house was the author of this vivid and picturesque and passionate tale. Perhaps the "visiting friend" whispered it to others, the name of Amélie Rives. At all events, it was very shortly signed to a free, strong, stirring sonnet in the Century. Several months later appeared in Lippincott "The Farrier Lass o' Piping Pebworth," which was perhaps more widely and more generously criticised than any short story of recent fiction. In quick succession followed "Nurse Crumpet's Story," a divinely passionate poem called "Grief and Faith," and the strongly imaginative "Story of Arnon." Miss Amélie Rives is the grand-daughter of William Cabell Rives, the Congressman, Senator, and Minister-Plenipotentiary to France of the earlier half of the present century. It was during the reign of Louis Philippe that the birth of Mr. Rives's eldest daughter was the occasion of a graceful compliment from the French queen in the bestowal of her name upon the little lady. This Amélie, whose life opened in the romance of court life, and who bore always the prestige of a queen's name, proved a woman of decided character and talent, and her gifts a faint shadowing of those to be possessed by a namesake yet unborn-were cruelly curtailed by her death in 1874, when she was drowned with her family on the ill-fated Ville du Hâvre. Colonel Alfred Landon Rives, the father of Amélie Rives, was also born in Paris, and can boast of Lafayette as a godfather. He was educated chiefly in Paris, graduated at the Ecole Polytechnique with distinguished honor, and adopted civil engineering as his profession. In 1861 he was married to Miss Macmurdo, a grand-daughter of Bishop Moore, of Virginia, and a noted beauty. To them was born in 1863, in the town of Richmond, Virginia, the now famous Amélie Rives. Colonel Rives's profession entailed a somewhat wandering life, therefore the early years of the little Amélie were chiefly passed at the old home of her grandfather, Castle Hill, in Albemarle County, Virginia. She was a favorite companion of the grave statesman until his death, when the baby had grown to be a solemn-faced little creature of four. Colonel Rives continued to make Castle Hill his home for two years longer, and in that time the child contracted an almost passionate love for the beautiful old homestead, which did not until some years later become the property of its present owner. Her eyes seemed never rested unless they gazed out on the rolling meadows beyond the lawn gate or revelled in the sunset colors behind the crest of the charming hills at the back of the house. It was a great wrench to leave the home for the new one in Mobile, Alabama; and, though she grew o be fondly attached to the quaint Southern town,-making of its trop ical growth, the blue waters of its perfect bay, its Southern skies and winds and bird-notes, the Italy of her imagination,-yet the long visits to Virginia from early spring to the lingering days of autumn were the times of her greatest joy. Like most imaginative children, Amélie was morbidly sensitive. Her fancies did not suit the children of every-day life; they misunderstood and somewhat dreaded her; while she, yearning with all the strength of childish passion (and in later life passion may be different, but not stronger) for love and appreciation, keenly felt its lack, and, thrown upon herself for her best pleasures, found the highest. Before she could write a sentence she had begun to draw, feeling her way patiently through difficulty and ignorance, until it suddenly dawned upon her family that she possessed unusual talent. At an incredibly early age she became an omnivorous reader, going always instinctively to the highest. Shakespeare was soon her daily and intimate friend and companion. There is now, among the exquisite éditions de luxe that are constantly sent to the Shakespearian scholar, a battered, well-thumbed, clearly-printed volume of the Master's complete works. It has broad white margins pencilled over in a hand varying from the first childish scribblings to the formed, distinct, characteristic writing of the woman. These comments always show thought, and are often luminous. It is a short step from reading to writing, and this step Amélie quickly took. It now became a serious matter to coax, borrow, or procure in any way paper to contain her imaginings. She dashed recklessly into story, drama, poem, always showing vivid imagination, and a sort of untrammelled strength, as one can readily believe after reading the sonnet in the Century Magazine already alluded to, which was written at the age of fifteen. Joined to this maturity was a fund of humor, superstition, and fancy, all of which made her a wonderful and enchanting child to older heads, though she was never comprehended or greatly loved by her child-friends. There is a pretty story told of her tying the legs of katydids to curling maple-leaves by means of her mother's embroidery-silk, throwing herself upon the grass, face downward, and, after sending the katydids scuttling off with their burden, praying that God would send them back with a real fairy in the leaf. This yearning to behold "a real fairy" seems at this period to have been the overweening desire of her soul. There is another picture of herself and her Fidus Achates sitting in the dim twilit woods at the back of the house. One can hear the future author of "Nurse Crumpet tells the Story," and the intense tragedy of "Herod and Mariamne," yet unpublished, ask, in wistful tones, "Do you think if I drank a whole cupful of warm bubbly blood, that I would see a real fairy?" can picture the horrified face of the little friend, and can catch her answer after a pause of terror, "No, but I am sure it will make you very very ill.” We wonder if the yearning desire for the unattainable would have carried the dauntless little soul as far as this blood-thirsty experiment? At one time she endured many pangs because of the eternal exclusion of the devil from Paradise, beseeching earnestly that he might be forgiven. And this strange child confessed herself afraid of nothing on earth so much as the bloody marks on the ceiling of her bedroom, made by a bird that had fluttered in, beating his head against the ceiling as he flew, and leaving its mark of death. The child imagined the blood to have been made by the finger of the apparition in Scott's "Betrothed." She never went to school, but had governesses, who guided rather than taught. With a mind so eager for knowledge, there was little fear of idleness. Some one, in writing of Miss Rives, says, "She has dipped her pen in herself;" and so she has, but always of herself in Virginia. An exquisite little essay appeared, and was lost, last summer, in the columns of Harper's Bazar. It was on "The Lack of Humor in Great Heroines," and opens with a sunny glimpse of lawn and trees and sky, with the writer lying along the "lush grass." One can often fancy her so in the long delicious idle days of summer. At another time she unconsciously depicts herself amid the fresh wet days of autumn, in a poem entitled "A Mood." No one knowing her could fail to recognize the "bright hair's flag," and the fresh drenched glow of the eager face. Miss Rives's prowess in horsemanship has been much commented on. As a matter of fact, she is an excellent horsewoman, though not, as the papers would have us believe, in the habit of jumping five-barred gates as a frequent amusement. One can see her nearly every day in the autumn and early winter sending her large bay "Usurper" along the picturesque roads that surround Castle Hill. She paints with the same instinctive power with which she writes, -struggling on with undaunted courage through the distracting mazes of color. As with her writing, she bides her time until fate carry her abroad, saying always, "It is genius to wait." By the way, "Fate" is a word never used by Miss Rives. She has been blessed from early childhood with the most unquestioning love and belief in the Maker of all things. In the face of scurrilous paragraphs, which have hinted at every kind of belief, including disbelief, it is but just to say that Miss Rives acknowledges and reverences to the utmost the God who has so lavishly endued her with great gifts. Perhaps it is trite to say that every home is stamped by the individualities of its occupants, but surely it is unusual to see an old homestead with its associations, legends, and architecture restamped by the personality of a young girl. Now the room formerly known as the "west wing" is shown as "Roden's, the one that Virginia died in." What has been called the "south chamber" for over a hundred years is now boasted of as the room where Virginia spun in the company of her unique pets. So with the "drawing-room," its pictures with their jewel-like effect, the old piano where Roden found the country-girl striking chords to see where the keys stuck, the dining-room where the heart-sick girl served that dainty meal to Roden and his sweetheart, when, overcome by love and passion, she burst out into, "I won't wait on her!" On my first introduction to this temple of hospitality and plenty, as 1 entered, and my host following shut the door, I was haunted by the thought of Virginia's love-wounded eyes, and fancied I heard in the drawing of the portière the swish of the girl's short skirts as Roden, amazed but cool, calmly closed the door. per There is another room, still more interesting, filled with the sonality of an imaginative mind. It is, as Hawthorne writes of his own, a haunted chamber. Let us turn to his words. "Here," he says, "I have written many tales, many that have been burned to ashes, many that doubtless deserved the same fate. This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon thousands of visions have appeared to me in it. If ever I should have a biographer, he ought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and here my mind and character were formed." It is meet, therefore, that those interested in Miss Rives, who believe in her future greatness, should have a glimpse of the home where her wonderful stories were born, where the vague, beautiful dreams of childhood and girlhood, conceived in the hot-house of solitude, have blossomed out so generously into leaf and flower. The white walls of this girlish, bower-like study are scattered over with delicate blue flowers, unobtrusively assisting the effect of many bold sketches in oil and charcoal, as well as two magnificent sea-views by Alexander Harrison. Amélie Rives's strong love of the sea is one of her most pronounced characteristics. One, a long narrow strip of sky and sea, where the waves break and curl in cringing eddies upon the beach, is full of luminous violet light, and through wave and foam and cloud flushes the after-glow of the sun. In full serene and golden beauty, poised half-way in the sky, the moon pours forth her beams clear to the foreground, apparently to one's feet. It fills one in studying it with the grand and assured conviction that in nature there can be no conflict, that there is "one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon," and that each augments the other. The second painting, perhaps more powerful in its simplicity of color and swinging action, is a glimpse of the ocean by night, as though, looking from a port-hole far out on the deep, one should gaze forth and feel the depth and color and mystery of the sea, covered with its pall of night. Another glance, and you catch the swell of the water, its silver light and upward-heaving wave, and even the angelic light far off where meet sea and sky cannot stay you from your berth and a horizontal posture. The tall, slenderly-panelled mantel is crowded with rare bric-a-brac. Over this is draped a richly-wrought blue silk and cloth-of-gold "Abba," sent to Miss Rives direct from Persia. Next, in charming contrast, hangs a mass of white satin and tattered silver tissue like clustered cobwebs, through which is thrust and crossed a pair of tarnished swords drawn from their scabbards. This is a little touch of womanly sentiment, and, unlike the cobwebs which the tissue resembles, is a pleasant reminder of a foreign country and splendid scenes. The crumpled, shining masses are the remains of the first court dress worn by Mrs |