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Sara Payson Willis, daughter of Nathaniel and
Sara Willis, was born in
Portland, Maine, in midsummer of the year of our
Lord 1811.
In that fine old town, in that fine old State, where as she says, “the timber and the human beings are sound,” she spent the first six years of her life.
During those years, our country passed through a troublous time, -a supplementary grapple with the old country,--final, let us hope, and eminently satisfactory in its results, to one party at least.
But it is not probable that the shock and tumult of war seriously disturbed the little
Sara, sphered apart from its encounters, sieges, conflagrations, and unnatural griefs, in the fairy realm of a happy childhood.
Whether we made a cowardly surrender at
Detroit, or incarnadined
Lake Erie with British blood,--whether we conquered at
Chippewa, or rehearsed
Bull Run at
Bladensburg,--whether our enemy burned the
Capitol at
Washington, or was soundly thrashed at New Orleans,--it was all the same to her. However the heart of the noble mother may have been pained by the tragedies, privations and mournings of that time, it brooded over the little baby-life in sheltering peace and love ;--as the robin, when her nest rocks in the tempest, shields her unfledged darlings with jealous care.
I have a theory, flanked by whole columns of biographical history, that no man or woman of genius was ever born of
