There rose up the picture of a child in the dear dim Long-ago:
She holds in her arms a puppy, and smilingly shows it to me,
Her cheeks they are rosy and chubby, all dimpled with baby glee;
Her hair is dark and wavy, her brown eyes full of fun,
And she wears a blue straw bonnet to shelter from the sun.
She gathers daisies and kingcups till her pockets are more than full,
And dreams of the far-away city where she soon must go to school;
Her home it is rustic and lonely in the land of the river Ness,
But she loves her rural dwelling, does dear little brown-eyed Bess.
One time—ah! how well I remember, it seems like yesterday,