John A. Calhoun, my Joe John; your temper must be sour;
Your scholars pester you, John; you flog them every hour.
But leave the rod behind you, John, when from the school you go,
Or else you may get flogged yourself, John A. Calhoun, my Joe.
John A. Calhoun, my Joe John, the terror of your name
Does not extend beyond the walls which for your own you claim;
So drop your haughty airs, John, and lay your wattle low,
And people will esteem you more, John A. Calhoun, my Joe.
John A. Calhoun, my Joe John, just take a friend’s advice;
And drop your pedagogic ways (you know they are not nice;)
And treat grown people with respect, and they the same will show,
And use those “open eyes” of yours, John A. Calhoun, my Joe.
John A. Calhoun, my Joe John, the trustees of our schools
Are not so smart as you, John, but then they’re not all fools;
And you have made yourself, John, appear a little low,
By your abuse of these poor men, John A. Calhoun, my Joe.
John A. Calhoun, my Joe John, now let us part in peace,
And may your honest name, John, so mightily increase,
That half a score of sons, John, may like their father grow—
But just a little modester, John A. Calhoun, my Joe.
[Emma Alice Browne.]
Emma Alice Browne was born about forty-five years ago, in an unpretentious cottage, which is still standing near the northeast corner of the cross-roads, on the top of Mount Pleasant, or Vinegar Hill, as it was then called, about a mile west of Colora. She is the oldest child of William A. Browne and Hester A. Touchstone, sister of the late James Touchstone. Her father was the youngest son of William Brown, who married Ann Spear, of Chester county, and settled a few yards north of the State Line, in what is now Lewisville, Chester county, Pennsylvania, where his son William was born, early in the present century. He was a stonemason by trade, and though comparatively uneducated, was possessed of a brilliant imagination, and so highly endowed by nature with poetic ability that he frequently amused and delighted his fellow-workmen by singing songs which he extemporized while at his work. There is no doubt that his granddaughter, the subject of this sketch, inherited much of her poetic talent from him; though her family is connected with that of Mrs. Felicia Hemans, the English poetess, whom though in some respects she resembles, we hesitate not to say she greatly surpasses in grandeur of conception and beauty of expression.
William Brown was a half-brother of the mother of the editor of this book; consequently Emma and he are cousins. If, therefore, this sketch should seem to exceed or fall short of the truth, the reader must attribute its imperfections to the inability of the writer to do justice to the subject, or to the great, but he hopes pardonable, admiration which he has long entertained for his relative’s literary productions.
The Brown family are of Scotch-Irish extraction, and trace their lineage away back through a long line of ancestors to the time when the name was spelled Brawn, because of the great muscular development of the rugged old Scotch Highlander who founded it.
William Brown’s early education was obtained at the common schools of the neighborhood where he was born. He was endowed by nature with a logical mind, a vivid imagination and great practical common sense; and a memory so tenacious as to enable him to repeat a sermon almost, if not quite, verbatim, a year after he had heard it delivered. Early in life he became an exemplary member of the Methodist Church, and was ordained as a Local Preacher in the Methodist Protestant persuasion, by the Rev. John G. Wilson, very early in the history of that denomination, in the old Harmony Church, not far south of Rowlandville. Subsequently he was admitted to the Conference as a traveling minister and sent to southeastern Pennsylvania, where he continued to preach the gospel with much success until his death, which occurred when his daughter Emma was a child about eight years of age.