SOME THOUGHTS - HH

Post by Doris McCraw
writing as Angela Raines

As I ponder what I would write about, a number of ideas came to mind. Since I have just finished an article in which Helen (Hunt) Jackson played a large part, I decided to share some of her writing.  

It was said that she rose at 5am and wrote until noon everyday unless ill. I can believe that might be true considering the amount of work she had published. So here for your consideration, H H or Helen (Hunt) Jackson.

The truth is, there is more to do on a rainy day than on any other. In addition to all the sweet, needful, possible business of living and working, and learning and helping, which is for all days, there is the beauty of the rainy day to see, the music of the rainy day to hear. It drums on the window-panes, chuckles and gurgles at corners of houses, tinkles in spouts, makes mysterious crescendoes and arpeggio chords through the air ; and all the while drops from the eaves and upper window-ledges are beating time as rhythmical and measured as that of a metronome,

But lonely people, and people whose kin are not kind or wise in these things, must learn to minister even in such ways to themselves. It is not selfish. It is not foolish. It is wise. It is generous. Each contented look on a human face is reflected in every other human face which sees it ; each growth in a human soul is a blessing to every other human soul which comes in contact with it.

Next morning, more prairie, — unfenced now, undivided, unmeasured, unmarked, save by the different tints of different growths of grass or grain ; great droves of cattle grazing here and there ; acres of willow saplings,pale yellowish green; and solitary trees, which look like hermits in a wilderness. These, and now and then a shapeless village, which looks even lonelier than the empty loneliness by which it is surrounded, — these are all for hours and hours. We think, " now we are getting out into the great spaces." " This is what the word ' West' has sounded like."

WHAT a new singer or a new play is to the city man, a new road is to the man of the wilderness.

I will leave you with one of my favorite poems Helen wrote

Two Truths

Darling,' he said, 'I never meant 
To hurt you;' and his eyes were wet. 
'I would not hurt you for the world: 
Am I to blame if I forget?' 

'Forgive my selfish tears!' she cried, 
'Forgive! I knew that it was not 
Because you meant to hurt me, sweet- 
I knew it was that you forgot!' 

But all the same, deep in her heart 
Rankled this thought, and rankles yet,- 
'When love is at its best, one loves 
So much that he cannot forget.'

I hope you enjoyed my trip down memory lane with the work of the author Helen (Hunt) Jackson. She wrote so many novels, poems, essays in the twenty years prior to her death in 1885.

If I can do half as much, half as well, I will be content. (Smile)

Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet

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