Fanny Kelly

SCENES ON CANNON BALL PRAIRIE—REFLECTIONS.

Well do I remember my thoughts and feelings when first I beheld the mighty and beautiful prairie of Cannon Ball River. With what singular emotions I beheld it for the first time! I could compare it to nothing but a vast sea, changed suddenly to earth, with all its heaving, rolling billows; thousands of acres lay spread before me like a mighty ocean, bounded by nothing but the deep blue sky. What a magnificent sight—a sight that made my soul expand with lofty thought and its frail tenement sink into utter nothingness before it! Well do I remember my sad thoughts and the turning of my mind upon the past, as I stood alone upon a slight rise of ground, and overlooked miles upon miles of the most lovely, the most sublime scene I had ever beheld. Wave upon wave of land stretched away on every hand, covered with beautiful green grass and the blooming wild flowers of the prairie. Occasionally I caught glimpses of wild animals, while flocks of birds of various kinds and beautiful plumage skimming over the surface here and there, alighting or darting upward from the earth, added life and beauty and variety to this most enchanting scene.

It had been a beautiful day, and the sun was now just burying himself in the far-off ocean of blue, and his golden rays were streaming along the surface of the waving grass and tinging it with a delightful hue. Occasionally some elevated point caught and reflected back his rays to the one I was standing upon, and it would catch, for a moment, his fading rays, and glow like a ball of golden fire. Slowly he took his diurnal farewell, as if loth to quit a scene so lovely, and at last hid himself from my view beyond the western horizon.

I stood and marked every change with that poetical feeling of pleasant sadness which a beautiful sunset rarely fails to awaken in the breast of the lover of nature. I noted every change that was going on, and yet my thoughts were far, far away. I thought of the hundreds of miles that separated me from the friends that I loved. I was recalling the delight with which I had, when a little girl, viewed the farewell scenes of day from so many romantic hills, and lakes, and rivers, rich meadows, mountain gorge and precipice, and the quiet hamlets of my dear native land so far away. I fancied I could see my mother move to the door, with a slow step and heavy heart, and gaze, with yearning affection, toward the broad, the mighty West, and sigh, wondering what had become of her lost child.

I thought, and grew more sad as I thought, until tears filled my eyes.

Mother! what a world of affection is comprised in that single word; how little do we in the giddy round of youthful pleasure and folly heed her wise counsels; how lightly do we look upon that zealous care with which she guides our otherwise erring feet, and watches with feelings which none but a mother can know the gradual expansion of our youth to the riper years of discretion. We may not think of it then, but it will be recalled to our minds in after years, when the gloomy grave, or a fearful living separation, has placed her far beyond our reach, and her sweet voice of sympathy and consolation for the various ills attendant upon us sounds in our ears no more. How deeply then we regret a thousand deeds that we have done contrary to her gentle admonitions! How we sigh for those days once more, that we may retrieve what we have done amiss and make her kind heart glad with happiness! Alas! once gone, they can never be recalled, and we grow mournfully sad with the bitter reflection.

“O, my mother!” I cried aloud, “my dearly beloved mother! Would I ever behold her again? should I ever return to my native land? Would I find her among the living? If not, if not, heavens! what a sad, what a painful thought!” and instantly I found my eyes swimming in tears and my frame trembling with nervous agitation. But I would hope for the best. Gradually I became calm; then I thought of my husband, and what might be his fate. It was sad at best, I well knew. And lastly, though I tried to avoid it, I thought of Mary; sweet, lost, but dearly beloved Mary; I could see her gentle features; I could hear her plaintive voice, soft and silvery as running waters, and sighed a long, deep sigh as I thought of her murdered. Could I never behold her again? No; she was dead, perished by the cruel, relentless savage. Silence brooded over the world; not a sound broke the solemn repose of nature; the summer breeze had rocked itself to rest in the willow boughs, and the broad-faced, familiar moon seemed alive and toiling as it climbed slowly up a cloudless sky, passing starry sentinels, whose nightly challenge was lost in vast vortices of blue as they paced their ceaseless round in the mighty camp of constellations. With my eyes fixed upon my gloomy surroundings of tyranny, occasionally a slip of moonshine silvered the ground. I watched and reflected. Oh, hallowed days of my blessed girlhood! They rise before me now like holy burning stars breaking out in a stormy, howling night, making the blackness blacker still. The short, happy spring-time of life, so full of noble aspirations, and glowing hopes of my husband’s philanthropic schemes of charitable projects in the future.

We had planned so much for the years to come, when, prosperous and happy, we should be able to distribute some happiness among those whose fate might be mingled with ours, and in the pursuit of our daily avocations we would find joy and peace. But, alas! for human hopes and expectations!

It is thus with our life. We silently glide along, little dreaming of the waves which will so soon sweep over us, dashing us against the rocks, or stranding us forever. We do not dream that we shall ever wreck, until the greater wave comes over us, and we bend beneath its power.

If some mighty hand could unroll the future to our gaze, or set aside the veil which enshrouds it, what pictures would be presented to our trembling hearts? No; let it be as the All-wise hath ordained—a closed-up tomb, only revealed as the events occur, for could we bear them with the fortitude we should if they were known beforehand? Shrinking from it, we would say, “Let the cup pass from me.”