Kilmeny of the Orchard

Transcriber’s Note: This book has been put on-line as part of the BUILD-A-BOOK Initiative at the Celebration of Women Writers through the combined work of Elizabeth Morton and Mary Mark Ockerbloom. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/ Reformatted by Ben Crowder
“Kilmeny looked up with a lovely grace, But nae smile was seen on Kilmeny’s face; As still was her look, and as still was her ee, As the stillness that lay on the emerant lea, Or the mist that sleeps on a waveless sea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Such beauty bard may never declare, For there was no pride nor passion there; . . . . . . . . . . . . . Her seymar was the lily flower, And her cheek the moss-rose in the shower; And her voice like the distant melodye That floats along the twilight sea.” — The Queen’s Wake JAMES HOGG
CONTENTS
The sunshine of a day in early spring, honey pale and honey sweet, was showering over the red brick buildings of Queenslea College and the grounds about them, throwing through the bare, budding maples and elms, delicate, evasive etchings of gold and brown on the paths, and coaxing into life the daffodils that were peering greenly and perkily up under the windows of the co-eds’ dressing-room.
A young April wind, as fresh and sweet as if it had been blowing over the fields of memory instead of through dingy streets, was purring in the tree-tops and whipping the loose tendrils of the ivy network which covered the front of the main building. It was a wind that sang of many things, but what it sang to each listener was only what was in that listener’s heart. To the college students who had just been capped and diplomad by “Old Charlie,” the grave president of Queenslea, in the presence of an admiring throng of parents and sisters, sweethearts and friends, it sang, perchance, of glad hope and shining success and high achievement. It sang of the dreams of youth that may never be quite fulfilled, but are well worth the dreaming for all that. God help the man who has never known such dreams—who, as he leaves his alma mater, is not already rich in aerial castles, the proprietor of many a spacious estate in Spain. He has missed his birthright.