John Seely Hart

“ A longing after heaven, that her spirit might be free from the thraldom of earth, was as natural to her, as a longing for a holiday to be let loose from school is to other children. Yet she enjoyed most fully the quiet pleasures that surrounded her, and her heart was always swelling with love and gratitude. Sometimes, too, the consciousness of genius,—the inward assurance that she was a poet,—would make her think on what might be, were she to live ”

“ But the links that bound them to each other on earth were soon severed;—for when she was but fifteen years and eight months old, this gentle girl died at Ballston, Saratoga county, in November, 1838. We could not wish that she should have stayed longer on earth, an exile from her native heaven; yet, as we listen to the soaring strains of her young genius, and are borne upward by their energy, we cannot help wondering what would have been its thrilling tones and lofty flights, had life unfolded its mysteries year after year to her poet’s eye. ”

“ Davidson was a man of extensive reading, and possessed a taste for natural science. His moral character, however, more than his intellectual, renders him worthy of notice. “He was one of the most guileless and pure-minded men I ever knew,” writes the friend we have before quoted. ”