calculated to call forth and foster poetical talent, Lucretia Maria
Davidson was born on the 27th September, 1808. Of her earliest
childhood there is nothing recorded, except that she was physically
feeble, and manifested extreme sensibility of disposition. She was
sent to school when she was four years old, and there was taught to
read and to imitate, in sand, the printed characters. Books now
possessed for her a greater charm than childish sports. The writing
paper began to disappear mysteriously from the table, and Lucretia was
often observed with pen and ink, to the surprise of her parents, who
knew that she had never been taught to write. The mystery remained
unexplained until she was six years old, when her mother, in searching
a closet rarely visited, found, behind piles of linen, a parcel of
little books filled with hieroglyphics. These were at length
deciphered by her parents, and proved to be metrical explanations of
rudely-sketched pictures on the opposite page; the explanations being
made in Roman letters, most unartistically formed and disposed. Not
long after, Lucretia came running to her mother in great agitation,
the tears trickling down her cheeks, and said, "O mamma! mamma! how
could you treat me so? My little books--you have shown them to
papa,--Anne,--Eliza! I know you have. O, what shall I do?" Her mother
tried to soothe the child, and promised never to do so again. "O
mamma," replied she, a gleam of sunshine illumining the drops, "I am
not afraid of that, for I have burned them all." "This reserve," says
one whose kindred spirit could sympathize with that of Lucretia,
"proceeded from nothing cold or exclusive in her character; never was
there a more loving or sympathetic creature. It would be difficult to
say which was most rare, her modesty, or the genius it sanctified."

It does not surprise us to learn that, under the guidance of pious
parents, religion took a deep and enduring hold, at a very early
period, upon so susceptible a child. From her earliest years, she
evinced a fear of doing any thing displeasing in the sight of God; and
if, in her gayest sallies, she caught a look of disapprobation from
her mother, she would ask, with the most artless simplicity, "O
mother, was that wicked?" Her extreme conscientiousness exhibited
itself in a manner quite remarkable in a child. Some of the friends of
the family thought their mode of education not the most judicious, and
that her devoting so much t