urkey or Persian
carpets were spread upon the floor, no sofa with rich carving and velvet
seat invited her to indolence; but instead, she trod upon soft green
moss, sweet grass and flowers, and when weary, reposed upon such seat as
Dame Nature provides for her children in her beautiful mansion--the old
stump, the mossy bank, the well-washed rock, or the tree prostrated by a
storm. No sparkling fountain rose into the air, and fell into its
ornamented basin, to please her taste; but the mountain waterfall, of
which this is but a feeble imitation, rushed down the rocks in
snow-white foam, near her cabin; and she would gaze upon it for hours
with delight. To the imaginative mind, to the eye and the ear open to
the impressions of beauty, nature has many school-books, unopened in the
great city, and amid the busy haunts of men; and her ready scholars may
gain many a lesson from the great common mother, undreamt of amid the
cares of business, the dreams of ambition, and the bustle of fictitious
wants. To Orikama the world was one vast temple: instead of marble
pillars with Corinthian capitals, instead of Gothic aisles and dark
Cathedrals, her eye rested with admiration upon the nobler, loftier
columns of trees that had grown for centuries, crowned with graceful
spreading foliage; upon long avenues, whose overlapping branches formed
a natural arch, imitated long since by man, and called an invention;
upon the deep recesses of forests, with their "dim religious light," or
with their sudden, glorious illumination, when the last rays of the sun
stream in lengthwise, with coloring as rich as any painted window can
furnish. Her choristers were the birds; her incense the sweet perfume
which the grateful earth and her innocent children the flowers
continually offer up to their Maker: instead of the gaudy chandelier,
she gazed upon the full-orbed moon, hanging like a silver lamp from its
dome of blue, and forcibly recalling the Divine Hand which placed it
there. All nature had a voice and a meaning to her, and in the absence
of the ordinary means of education, and of the invaluable aids of the
Christian ministry, her pure and religious soul

"Found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."

Living thus constantly in the open air, while her mind expanded in
tranquil beauty, she grew up a blooming, healthful maiden, whose kindly,
candid nature shone out through a countenanc