Frontier and pioneer life -- Kentucky -- Fiction; Kentucky -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction
ROBERTSON’S CHEAP SERIES
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GLEN’S CREEK.
BY
MARY JANE HOLMES.
_COMPLETE._
TORONTO:
J. ROSS ROBERTSON, 67 YONGE ST.
1878.
GLEN’S CREEK.
CHAPTER I.
REMINISCENCES.
O’er Lake Erie’s dark, deep waters,—across Ohio’s broad, rich lands, and
still onward, among the graceful forest trees, gushing springs, and
fertile plains of Kentucky, rests in quiet beauty, the shady hillside,
bright green valley, and dancing waterbrook, known as Glen’s Creek. No
stately spire or glittering dome point out the spot to the passing
traveller, but under the shadow of the lofty trees stands a large brick
edifice, which has been consecrated to the worship of God. There, each
Sabbath, together congregate the old and young, the lofty and the lowly,
bond and free, and the incense which from that altar ascends to heaven
is not the less pure because in that secluded spot the tones of the
Sabbath bell never yet were heard. Not far from the old brick church are
numerous time-stained grave-stones, speaking to the living of the pale
dead ones, who side by side lie sleeping, unmindful of the wintry storm
or summer’s fervid heat.
A little farther down the hill, and near the apple tree, whose apples
_never_ get ripe, stands a low white building,—the school house of
Glen’s Creek. There, for several years, “Yankee schoolmasters,” one
after another, have tried by turns the effect of moral suasion, hickory
sticks and leathern straps on the girls and boys who there assemble,
some intent upon mastering the mysteries of the Latin Reader, and others
thinking wistfully of the miniature mill-dam and fish-pond in the brook
at the foot of the hill, or of the play-house under the maple tree,
where the earthens are each day washed in the little “tin bucket” which
serves the treble purpose of dinner-pail, wash-bowl, and drinking-cup.
But not with Glen’s Creek as it now is has our story aught to do,
although few have been the changes since, in the times long gone, the
Indian warrior sought shelter from the sultry August sun ’neath the bows
of the shady buckeye or towering honey locust, which so thickly stud the
hillside of Glen’s Creek. Then, as now, the first spring violet
blossomed there, and the earliest crocus grew near the stream whose
waters sang as mournfully to the dusky maiden of the forest, as they
since have to the fair daughter of the pale-face.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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