I had already seen around the house a copy of
the _Spectator_, and Pope's poems. Zoe told me that she had read these
books, part of them over and over, and that she had had a teacher the
year before who had helped her to understand them. I began to delimn Zoe
as a girl of intelligence. Of vital spirits she had an abundance.... The
night was very warm and of wonderful stillness, no breeze. We heard the
cry of what Zoe called "varmints" in the woods. A night bird was
singing. She told me it was the whippoorwill. I never had heard a more
thrillingly melancholy note. Once Zoe stepped upon a stick in the road.
Thinking it was a snake she gave a cry and leaped to one side. But I
calmed her and we kept our way.... I had never seen the stars to the
same advantage, not even on the ocean. They were spread above us in
infinite numbers, and of remarkable brilliancy. And there was the
prairie, stretching as far as the eye could penetrate into the haze of
the horizon, except where a distant forest rimmed the edge of the
visible landscape. Zoe took up my remark about the spaciousness of the
country with telling me that young Douglas had been to supper a few
nights before I had come to myself out of the fever, and that he had
said that the prairie affected him as liberty would affect an eagle
released from a cage; and that he looked back upon the hills of Vermont
as barriers to his vision.
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