A Daughter of Maryland — page 19: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

RE eee Sone MT ele a ME ee ay Ae: S) Co NS wr, . 4 5 aus * ot a f 4 y ls % - ane Lp oe : ’ + - A A DAUGHTER OF MARYLAND. _ Entering then the dilapidated house, he closed the door behind him, not to appear again until another day should eall him forth to hold his lonely vigil at the mountain ,gateway, and to pass in review as he had done so many times before his Dhantom troops. Wouldst know the history of this strange anchorite? Wouldst lift the cloud that darkens these hdmes and this landscape? Then, turn back with me three pages in the book of years—only three—years that merely measure the brief transition period of infancy—years that fickle memory does not take into account in her balance sheet of a life. Three years! Time enough to rob the fairest cheek of its rose, to weave threads of silver in tresses of brown, to divide households, to make enemies of brothers, haters of lovers, to rend asunder the bonds of a great government, to change the grainfields of Antietam’s smiling valley into the battle-ground of mighty armies. ‘*Sylvania,’’ the homestead of the Lanciers for several ‘generations, was most happily situated on the eastern bor- der of the Antietam Valley. A serried background was formed by the mountains, over whose bold crags and ever- green terraces the morning sun flung its first radiance of glory and on whose purple peaks the last rays of daylight played with the fantastic shadows below. Down the moun- tain side sparkling cascades leaped merrily from mossy retreats, to swell into clear, pebble-strewn streams that banded the lowlands like so many silvery ribbons on the | fair bosom of nature. Looking westward the beholder tN gazed on a wide area of green-clad meadows, waving fields | of grain and dark patches of forest. A typical old Maryland manor built in the days of the Calverts, the house was a long, low structure of brick, standing upon a slight eminence, with a row of stately elms planted by the founder of the estate in front of the door. Below these trees was a lawn of half a dozen acres terraced in the English style, either end of these terraces marked by comicbooks.co