The beauteous blue-bells and the lilies fair.”
But no! the influences of their associations in their home-lives, rendered their imaginations—for imaginations they had—less dreamy, less poetical.
This work-day atmosphere in which we striving, success-seeking Americans live and breathe, deprives even our childhood’s day-dreams of romance and poësy, and who can say whether it be well or not? The mysterious voice of the Past says, “All that is permitted is needed,” therefore, let this American Judaic spirit roll on, the Nineteenth Century needs it, to perform her part of the world’s development.
If we return to our little wood-ramblers and listen to their gossip, we shall see how tangible and real were the subjects of their day-dreams, though quite as improbable, apparently, as the old imaginings of Enchantment and Faëry Land.
“Oh,” lisped a little coquettish thing, the pet evidently of the group, whose light, floating ringlets threw faint shadows over her round, white shoulders, “let’s play that I’m a duchess, and you are all come to visit me at my ducal palace. These are my grounds, and some of you shall be my ladies.” Thereupon the little witch threw her faëry form on the turfy bank, in a languishing position, and prepared to take upon her little self, all the state and dignity of a duchess.
“Not I for one,” said the tallest of the group, although the rest seemed half disposed to enter into the proposed play. “If there’s to be any duchess playing, I’ll be the titled lady. Yes, I will be your princess, and hold here my regal court.”
If princesses have a divine right to beauty, the girl might have been one of the most royal. She had, for so young a girl, a presence and bearing remarkable for dignity, and her form gave promise of fine development. Her head was well placed on a beautiful neck and drooping shoulders. Her rich, dark hair was cut short and brushed back from a low Medicean brow, and it clustered in thick, close curls around the back of her well-shaped head and white neck. Although her brow was low, and her chin almost voluptuously full, her keen, black eyes, arched eye-brows, that in some moods almost met over a nose that was delicate and handsome in shape, and whose nostrils trembled and dilated with every shadow of feeling, and a mouth well shaped, but firm in expression, all told that the girl had a haughty, imperious spirit, one such as a princess might have; and she carried herself as though she would have said, as Marie Antoinette did, when some one remarked her erect bearing,
“Were I not a queen, I suppose, people would call me insolent.”
“Duchess and princess indeed!” exclaimed one of the girls, contemptuously. “How absurd to talk such nonsense. Who ever heard of such duchesses and princesses as you’d make?”
“And why not, mademoiselle?” asked the would-be princess.