Mary Lee

“ Mary Lee returned. "He always comes with us."
"Because you go prowling around and I sit still," retorted Nan. "He's just as fond of me, I know."
But Mary Lee had her way and called Unc' Landy to keep Trouble at home. ”

“ Mary Lee was bubbling over with excitement. Her usual calmness had disappeared entirely under pressure of the occasion. She poured forth into Nan's willing ear the story she had heard from Miss Dolores. "Isn't it romantic?" she said at last, pausing to take breath.
"I should think so," returned Nan, briskly beating eggs. "Why, Mary Lee, it is just like Ramona. She was adopted by her aunt and didn't know her father's name and all that. Isn't it queer? Do you suppose she will marry an Indian like Allessandro? Dear me, it is just like a story." ”

“ A place at a bookkeeper's desk had been the first thing that he had been able to obtain.
He felt Mary Lee's lack of advantages more than she did. With the exception of a few excursions into the country, she had lived all her seventeen years in this dingy little house on a side street. Her mother had been her only teacher, and the men and women found in the books of her father's library her only companions. Mary Lee was a sociable creature; she [63] longed for the companionship of girls of her own age. ”

“ As she hung upon his bosom and fed his eyes with the soft beams of a first love, shining through tears of kindness and devotion, who could have observed, in that light, more danger than belongs to so innocent a thing as a woman’s smile? Robert Ashley had known by experience, that a woman’s eye that does not shine on her seducer, generally shines not at all, unless it be in the phosphorescent brightness of the corruption of the grave. Mary Lee was, like other women, an object to be possessed, not feared ”

“ It sounds like castanets and Moorish palaces and things."
"Oh, you are so romantic, Nan," said Mary Lee; "you are always imagining all sorts of things."
"She plays well," continued Nan without heeding her sister, and listening intently to the music. "I wonder if she plays the guitar or the mandolin; I should love to hear her."
"They are coming out now," remarked Mary Lee after a pause. "She is very pretty, Nan, isn't she?"
Nan drew herself up from her lounging position and Mary Lee did the same. The movement attracted Miss Helen's attention. ”

“ Poor Mary Lee acted from her impulses; nor did she see danger. There is the “mid-deep,” which the sailors of the Solway point out to the passenger who looks on the fallacious calm, as it hovers o’er the graves of many a drowned mariner. There is a moral mid-deep in the paths of most of us, but which we never see till we are engulphed.
As Mary Lee grew up, she came necessarily under the view of young Ashley, who, as he called for the boat, noticed the young maiden sitting on the beach, throwing the glances of her blue eye on the mirror of the silvery Solway ”

“ Jean clung to her and even Jack looked scared. Mary Lee cowered down in the corner and covered her face.
"Come, I'll tell you what we'll do," said Nan, though by no means unaffrighted herself; "we'll do what Aunt Sarah's grandmother used to do; we'll all go up-stairs; it's safer there, and we'll pile all the pillows on mother's bed—we'll pull it into the middle of the room first—and then we'll all get on it and say hymns. There isn't any feather-bed like they used to have, but the pillows will answer the same purpose. Come, Mary Lee." ”

“ But Mary Lee was enjoying her unwonted pleasure of news-giving too much to let out all her information at once and she went on, "Of course we shall not travel so very much after we once get there for it will be better that mother should settle down in some one place where it will agree with her. Aunt Helen says we must not give up our studies, and that you especially must keep up your music, so we shall probably take some little cottage where we can have a piano. It would be fun to have a Chinese servant, wouldn't it?" ”

“ Most people think Mary Lee prettier because she has light hair and nice little features, but Nan has such eyes, like stars, and she has a face like April, so changeable; everything she feels she shows in her face, it is so expressive. [163] She is seventeen, nearly eighteen, and Mary Lee is just sixteen. Is that your violin, and can you play? Nan plays, oh, beautifully, on the piano.”
“It’s my violin, yes. Shall I give you a tune? I nearly always play after dinner, but I seldom care for an audience.” ”

“ Mary Lee looked up quickly. "I don't believe that you understand, after all," she cried. "I could rise above the snubbings. It is not that that hurts, but it is the disappointment. Oh, you don't know how I longed to be friends with those girls! They are so bright and attractive, and seem to have such good times together. It is the missing of all that I had hoped to find that hurts."
The wistfulness of the fair little face touched the general's gallant soul to the quick. ”

“ We'll ask Cousin Polly."
"And where shall we have it?" said Nan. This was the most frequently discussed question and they had not, as yet, come to any satisfactory answer to it.
Mary Lee looked out of the window thoughtfully. "I am sure I don't know," she replied. "No one wants to give up a room big enough."
"If mother were only here," sighed Nan, "she'd think of some place that would do; she always has ideas." Then suddenly the girl gave a little squeal and clutched Mary Lee's arm. "I know," she cried. ”

“ She sent Jean to find Mary Lee and tell her to come to the kitchen and then she set to work.
"They're just like company," was the remark with which she greeted Mary Lee. "They don't act a bit as if they belonged to us. The little one, Ashby, hardly opened his lips, and the other one was polite enough but acted as if we weren't kinsfolk at all, but just strangers who were going to take them to board. I'm going to have bacon and eggs for supper. I wish you'd see if Unc' Landy is around anywhere; he can cut the bacon for us. ”

“ This confidence in her mother's opinion somewhat [Pg 175] altered Mary Lee's point of view. "Well," she said, "I wouldn't have gone myself, still, I think Aunt Sarah has no right to punish big girls like us for something our mother would not scold us for. She ought to wait till she knows for sure before she ups and makes a prisoner of one of us."
"She'd think she had a right to shut mother up if she did anything Aunt Sarah disapproved of," said Nan, mournfully. "Tell me, Mary Lee, how are you going to explain it to the boys?" ”

“ Where were you?”
“Oh, just over there in the hammock.”
“Dreaming as usual, I suppose,” said Mary Lee. “I believe Nan is training to be a poetess; she spends so much time flocking by herself in wooded nooks and shady dells.”
“All the flocking by yourself in the world wouldn’t make you poetical, Mary Lee,” retorted Nan. “What’s up, girls? Give us the programme.” ”

“ With her usual compliance, Jean consented to go to call upon her grandmother though Mary Lee obstinately refused to make any overtures. Children often have very strong prejudices and are even more determined in their refusal to give them up than are their elders. Mary Lee felt quite virtuous in her decision not to make friends with her relatives and often berated Nan for having no backbone and for influencing Jack. ”

“ I was just thinking, Mary Lee, suppose Daniella won't take anything after we have had the bazaar for her benefit. What shall we do then?"
"Give the money for something else: home missions or traveling libraries or something. We shall have had the fun anyhow," a view of the matter which Nan regarded as very sensible. Mary Lee generally did have sensible advice to give.
"I'll make a lot of panuchee," Nan went on, "and I'll put black walnuts in some; nearly every one likes that kind best. ”

“ You do not know how much I have missed you and the children, my dear Mary. To be alone in a crowd is very solitary. In the woods, I feel sympathy with the trees and birds, in whose company I take delight, but experience no pleasure in a strange crowd. I hope you are all well and will continue so, and, therefore, must again urge you to be very prudent and careful of those dear children. If I could only get a squeeze at that little fellow, turning up his sweet mouth to ‘keese baba!’ You must not let him run wild in my absence, and will have to exercise firm authority over all of them. ”

“ I have had too many soft, breaking hearts. Their very softness has palled upon my appetite; and, as the lover of gourmandize requires stimulants to whip up the jaded powers of his overwrought stomach, my wearied heart longs for a spice of piquant amativeness, to resuscitate its flagging energies.”
Such reflections are but too common with the young rakes of all times; Robin-a-Ree acted upon them, and he was not long in producing an effect upon Mary Lee. He spoke to her at first merely as the daughter of the fisherman ”

“ It's the distances that count. . . . You can't limit a machine, you know."
"You'd better limit yourself," she said, quietly. "You'll go smash some day."
He laughed out. "You'd like me to, wouldn't you—just to say, 'I told you'!"
"I'd like you to have sense," she said, "and save yourself for something worth while."
He glanced down the room—"Going to let Mary Caldwell have it?"
She colored a little, a quick, fleeting flush as if something had touched her. . . . Then the color danced. "What do you think?" ”

“ Lee represented the Ringwood Journal and was elected vice-president of the organization.
Were all the facts mentioned, here wanting, the peculiar womanly spirit, the elevated and the positive personal character of Mrs. Mary E. Lee, would constitute her a worthy subject for the study of young Afro-American women. Every one who knows her bears witness to her sterling qualities and fine sense of proprieties. By the request of her friends she expects to publish a book of poems. This book will, no doubt, be looked for and read with great interest by our aspiring young women. ”

“ We hear regularly from Mary and Agnes, who seem to be enjoying themselves, and I do not think from their programme that they will get back to us till summer. All unite in much love, and I am always, Your father,
“R. E. Lee.”
This same month he writes a long letter to his daughter Agnes, who was visiting friends in Baltimore. The Annette, Mildred, and Mary he mentions in this letter were the daughters of Charles Henry Carter, of “Goodwood,” Maryland, a first cousin of my father:
“Lexington, Virginia, March 28, 1868. ”

“ As General Lee rode on towards Richmond he was calm, and his thoughts dwelt much more on the state of the poor people at whose houses he stopped than upon his own bad fortune. When he found that all along the road the people were glad to see him and gave him gladly of what they had to eat, he said, “These good people are kind—too kind. They do too much—more than they are able to do—for us.” ”

“ Lee, saying that Mary would leave ‘Richlands’ last Tuesday, 10th inst., for ‘Ravensworth,’ which I presume she did, as his letter was postmarked that day at Acquia Creek, and was probably mailed by him, or one of the boys, on putting her aboard the mail-boat. You will be glad to learn that the proceeds of the concert for our church at Lexington netted $605, which has been subsequently increased to $805 by Messrs. Corcoran and Peabody with a donation of $100 from each. For all of this I am extremely grateful. ”

“ At length Lee went into winter quarters in a tent at the edge of an old pine field near Fredericksburg, and began to get ready for fight when the spring came. It was at this time that among a number of fowls given to Lee, was a fine hen which began the egg business before her head came off, and Bryan, Lee’s servant, saved her for the egg which he found each day in the General’s tent. Lee would leave the door of the tent open for the hen to go in and out. She roosted and rode in the wagon, and was an eye-witness of the battle of Chancellorsville. She was also at the battle of Gettysburg ”

“ Shortly after the death of General Lee, a few ladies met in a parlor in Richmond and formed a society known as the Ladies’ Lee Monument Association. Their plan was to erect a monument in Richmond to the memory of the great chief, and to collect funds for this purpose from the entire South. They began at once their labor of love. Though the South was at that time very poor, the people gave gladly of their small means until the Ladies’ Association had collected over fifteen thousand dollars. ”

“ On that day, all over the South, meetings are held in memory of him, speeches are made by great men, and children recite poems which honor his name and deeds.
Perhaps no man has ever lived, so great, so good, so unselfish as Lee. Duty was the key-note of his life. In the midst of his greatness he was humble, simple and gentle. He loved little children wherever he met them.
“One day, during the war, a number of little girls were rolling hoops on the sidewalks in Richmond, when General Lee came riding towards them. They stopped playing to gaze at so great a man. ”

“ She rules her brother and my nephews with an iron rod, and scatters her advice broadcast among the young men of the college. I hope that it may yield an abundant harvest. The young mothers of Lexington ought to be extremely grateful to her for her suggestions to them as to the proper mode of rearing their children, and though she finds many unable to appreciate her system, she is nothing daunted by the obtuseness of vision, but takes advantage of every opportunity to enlighten them as to its benefits. Mary and Agnes are still in Baltimore, and are now at the house of Mrs. ”