Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/40

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she had heard as a child on a southern plantation, and she sang him old darkey folksongs. They had a game which they played with a song which began, Come on! It's Sat'day night! Auntie Persia, indeed, understood children. . . .

Meanwhile, Sadi Prewett continued to live her life, which consisted in rising, dressing, eating a hearty country breakfast, playing the Anna Song from Nanon, eating lunch, taking her afternoon drive, taking her tea, eating dinner, sitting for an hour or so before the fire in the winter, or on the lawn in the summer, and then retiririg. These habits were invariable. Other unimportant incidents might be added to her day, however. Sometimes, she read a little, almost always from two little books of poems by Mrs. Hemans and Adah Isaacs Menken. The pale and fragile passion of Mrs. Hemans seemed very moving to her. Tears, indeed, consistently obscured her vision, as she read the lyric narrative of Gertrude von der Wart:

And bid me not depart, she cried,
My Rudolph, say not so!
This is no time to quit thy side;
Peace, peace, I cannot go.
Hath the world aught for me to fear,
When death is on thy brow?
The world! what means it—mine is here
I will not leave thee now.

In Miss Menken's Infelicia, she preferred the