York. She is not the gay and vivacious being which her book, “A New Home in the West,” led us to imagine. Hers is a character of greater depth. That playful spirit, with its feeling for the comic in life, has been depressed by sorrow and misfortune, but it flashes forth sometimes and then reveals the depth of the soul's earnestness. She is an ardent and strong woman, and a true fellow-citizen, and has sustained herself amid great trials by religion, and by the necessity to work for her four children, two sons and two daughters; the youngest son, Willie, and the youngest daughter, Cordelia, are especially my favourites. Friendship with the noble and distinguished preacher, Mr. Bellows, as well as her literary occupation, make her life anything but poor. She is one of those natures in which the feminine and the manly attributes are harmoniously blended, and which therefore is well balanced, and is capable of taking the lead of those around her.
I saw at her house a Miss Haynes, who has been a missionary in China, and who, still young and handsome, conducts a large girls boarding-school in New York. She interested me by her individuality, and by the interesting stories which she related of Miss Dorothea Dix (the Mrs. Fry of the New World), and her uncommon force of character and activity. I hope yet to meet this angel of prisons and hospitals, and to kiss her hand for that which she is, and that which she does.
At Mrs. Kirkland's I also saw the young traveller, Bayard Taylor, who had just returned from California, and I was glad to hear his stories from the land of gold; in particular of the character of its scenery, its climate, vegetable productions, and animals. Apropos of him. I must beg leave to tell you a little about what I think a Yankee is, or what he seems to me to be; and by Yankee is properly understood, one of the boys of New England; the type of the “go a-head America,”—of Young America.
