In 1875 Mrs. Simpers began to write for the New York Mercury, which then numbered among its contributors Ned Buntline, Harriet Prescott, George Marshall, George Arnold, Bayard Taylor, W. Scott Way, and many other distinguished writers with whom she ranked as an equal in many respects, and many of whom she excelled as a brilliant satirist and pathetic painter of the quaint and the beautiful.
For ten years she continued to contribute letters, essays, stories and poems to the Mercury, and to advocate the claims of her sex to the right of suffrage, in which she still continues to be a firm believer. Mrs. Simpers has also contributed largely to the Woman’s Journal and other periodicals.
Though possessed of a brilliant poetic genius, Mrs. Simpers is best known as a writer of prose; and, in addition to the large quantity of matter she has contributed to the newspaper press, is the author of a story of about two hundred pages illustrative of the principles and practices and exemplifying the social life of the Friends, for which she received a prize of two hundred dollars. This story was highly spoken of by Dr. Shelton McKenzie, with whom she was on terms of intimacy for some years immediately before his death, and also by many other distinguished writers.
On the 22d of February, 1879, the subject of this sketch married Captain John G. Simpers, who served with distinction in the Second Regiment Delaware Volunteers in the war of the rebellion. They, at the time of writing this sketch, reside near the summit of Mount Pleasant, and within a short distance of the birth-place of Emma Alice Browne.
[The Miller’s Romance.]
The miller leaned o’er the oaken door,
Quaint shadows swung on the dusty floor,
The spider toiled in the dust o’erhead,
With restless haste, and noiseless speed,
Like one who toils for sorest need—
Like one who toils for bread.
“Ha!” says the miller, “does he pause to hark—
Hark! Hark! Hark!
To the voice of the waters, down in the dark—
Dark! Dark! Dark!
Turning the lumbering, mumbling wheel;
Which moans and groans as tho’t could feel?”
“Ha!” laughed the miller, “he pauses not and why—
In the sunshine pausing and musing I?
When the spiteful waves seem to repeat—
Repeat! Repeat! Repeat!
The hateful word deceit—
Deceit! Deceit! Deceit”
“Nay,” mused the miller, “their musical drip—
Drip! Drip! Drip!
Is like to naught but the trip—
Trip! Trip! Trip!
In the dance of her fairy feet,
Or her rippling-laughter cool and sweet!”
* * * * * *
Once more,
The miller leans o’er the oaken door.
Still play the shadows upon the floor,
Still toils the spider overhead;
Like one who toils for daily bread—
“Since the red lips unto me have lied
The spell hath lost its power,
For never a false heart brings my bride
Whatever else her dower!”
And louder yet the waves repeat
Their burthen old, deceit, deceit!
* * * * * *
In flocks of brown, the leaves haste down,
And floods, in the wild March weather;
While the mill, the miller, and the miller’s love dream,
Have all grown old together!