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54 Youth's Golden Gleam |
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stagecoach travel to Bardstown. Seated on top with the driver Stephen would admire the charming Kentucky countryside and he might recall that newspaper editor's jingle11 quoted in the Gazette last week:
Some love to ride
When the river's wide
On a steamboat whistling free;
But a prancing team—
Strong axle beam,
And a whirl in the stage for me.
Arrived at the stately brick house of the Rowans, "set on a hill in the shade of heaven-tree and pine/'12 Stephen would enjoy Kentucky hospitality; and he may have remembered the family story that in this house his sister Charlotte, on a visit twenty years before, had received a proposal of marriage from John Rowan, Jr.13
The marriage theme was later to bind Ste-
E
hen to Bardstown in legendary fashion. Un-appily the tradition that he journeyed to Federal Hill while on his wedding trip in 1850 was blighted by the discovery in 1934 of a letter of Stephen's showing that Jane Mac-Dowell Foster and he went to Baltimore and New York City on their honeymoon.14 However, it is not poetic license to accept the likelihood that in this idyllic spot Stephen obtained his love for Kentucky when summer ripened the corn tops, made the meadows bloom, and brought gayety to darkies and their masters. Wherever "My Old Kentucky |
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