generous hospitality, the faithful adherents, the graceful society, and the luxuriant beauty of nature, that displayed itself in and around the family mansion, is still vivid in the mind of our author, and shows itself in the fervour and enthusiasm of her language whenever she writes of the land of her childhood.
But the day-dreams of youth were doomed to a sad awakening. Miss McIntosh, in 1835, after the death of both her parents, left her native place, to reside in New York, with her brother, James M. McIntosh, of the U. S. Navy. With the change of residence came a change in the investment of her property. The whole of her ample fortune was vested in New York securities just previous to the commercial crisis of 1837, and the lady awoke from her life-dream of prosperity, in a strange city, totally bankrupt.
By an almost universal dispensation of Providence, which ordains means of defence and support to the frailest formations of animal life, with the new station was granted a power of protection, of pleasure, and maintenance, unknown to the old. New feelings and powers came into life. Thoughts that before were scarcely formed, emotions that had never shaped themselves into expression, and ideas of the high and holy in life that had been hitherto unshapen dreams, suddenly attained a new growth. Hundreds of seeds that hung to the tree when all was sunshine, were shaken to the earth by the blast, watered by the storm, and sprung to a vigorous life,—until, at length, the very subject of misfortune blessed the evil that had been changed to a good.
Two years after the loss of her property, Miss McIntosh had completed her first work. It was a small volume, bearing the marks of a feeling, religious mind, and written in a pleasant, easy style, suitable for children, and bore the name of "Blind Alice." Few understand how sensitive is the anxiety of an author for his first work; how he watches and criticises his dearest feelings when they are about to be made public property, and issued to the world. But how much greater must be this sensitive dread when the author is a woman, and a woman whose whole life and support are cast upon that one venture? Miss McIntosh had all these feelings to struggle with in their fullest strength, and, in addition, the delays and difficulty of obtaining the publication of a work by a new writer.
For two years the manuscript of this little volume lay alternately on the table of the author and the desk of the publishers. At last, in January, 1841, it was issued anonymously. Its success was complete; and with renewed energy the author resumed her pen, and finished and published in the summer of the same year "Jessie Graham," a work of similar size and character. "Florence Arnott," "Grace and Clara," and "Ellen Leslie," all of the same class and style, appeared successively, and at short intervals, the last being published in 1843.
These works are generally known as "Aunt Kitty’s Tales." They
