In a neighboring farm-house, but a short distance from his father’s farm, lived Mary S. Agnew. She was born and reared in the same community, went to the same school, attended the same church, and was a playmate, classmate, and trusted companion. They sought each other in childhood’s days, and their friendship ripened into love as imperceptibly and surely as the coming and going of the years developed their lives, and pressed them forward into manhood and womanhood. Her dark hair and eyes, her slender form, her lovable disposition, her conscientiousness and purity were presented to him in that strong light, under which all lovers see the merits and virtues of their sweethearts. Added to that was the romance and insight of that other sense which poets are said to possess. He built a shrine to this idol wherever he went, and through all his early years she was, as he said in verse, the representative to him of the goodness of God. On the farm, he made verses in her honor; at the Quaker meeting he was thankful for her; at the parties and social gatherings among the young folks, she was the centre of his thought. Not foolishly or blindly did he exhibit his affection. Not extravagantly or obtrusively did he follow his wooing. But his poetry and his prose give here and there a clew to the deep and fervent love of his youthful days. Some of his very sweetest poetry found its inspiration in that love, and when the volume is published, if ever it is, in which shall appear those sonnets, which have modestly been kept thus far from the public gaze, there will be found gems that the world cannot well spare. How sincere, disinterested, and noble was his affection, was proved by his faithful and unabated love, after he had seen the world and its loveliest ladies, and after the cruel hand of disease had chiselled away the round and rosy cheeks, and left, in place of the sparkling, blushing maiden of his early love, a pallid spectre—a shadow of her former self. In all his wanderings, he never neglected her. In all his most tender writings, her image is more or less clear. In one of his volumes, “The Poet’s Journal,” he gives a history of his love and sorrow; of the awakening, after years of death, in the sweetest and most touching of all his poems. He allowed some of his earlier verses to see the light of print, wherein he makes mention, indirectly, of Mary S. Agnew. When travelling along the Danube, in 1845, he thus writes:— “Old playmates! bid me welcome Amid your brother-band; Give me the old affection,— The glowing grasp of hand! I seek no more the realms of old,— Here is my Fatherland. Come hither, gentle maiden, Who weep’st in tender joy! The rapture of thy presence Repays the world’s annoy, And calms the wild and ardent heart Which warms the wandering boy.