geraniums, roses, tropical plants and the blossoms of the North. A
chorus of birds filled the air with music. Majestic old live-oaks with
twilight veils of gray moss were like tall and stately nuns pausing
suddenly to count their beads to the music of vesper bells. Magnolia
trees in dense white blossom gave the impression that winter had
aroused from his summer sleep and unfolded his blanket of snow to add
his most beautiful touch to the charms of the golden days. A handsome
driveway led across a lawn to a veranda, vine-wreathed and hidden in a
crush of flowers. The house, divided by a wide hall, opened upon broad
piazzas. Leading up to it through brilliant blossoming was a white
path between sentinel lines of oak trees that reached out friendly
hands to clasp each other above the broad footway. Amid such beauty
one felt lost in a mystic world of which he had never dreamed and
revelled in a vision from which he might hope that there would be no
waking.

Augusta Jane Evans was born May 4, 1835, near Columbus, Georgia. "The
Queen City of the Chattahoochee" is enthroned in a pine forest amid a
range of hills that form a semi-circle about the city with its fine
wide streets and magnificent shade trees. The St. Elmo Institute for
girls, with its great oak grove and its beautiful lake, was the model
for the school in the book, "St. Elmo." Sweet memories of the
beautiful home in Columbus remained in the heart of Miss Evans and she
said in after years that many of the happiest days of her girlhood
were spent there. In later years she had here her "White Farm," on
which all the animals and fowls were white.

In her childhood the family removed to Galveston, Texas, going
afterward to San Antonio. In the two years spent here she studied
under the tutorship of her mother, who never gave up her charge to the