THE following brief Memoir, contributed over the
signature of F. G. H. to the columns of the Mobile
Record, at the date of Miss Brown's decease, gives
us all that has been brought to light concerning the
Author of Catoninetales.
Hattie Brown was born at Natches, Ga., where
her parents were field-hands on the plantation of Mr. Jo.
Fields. Little Hattie, named after one of the gentleman's
daughters, was treated as a pet. Miss Fields, a first-rate
musician, had also much taste for poetry, which she was
in habit of reciting; and Hattie, with the African faculty
of imitation, so picked up the laws of measure as well as
an insatiate ambition for original production. After the
War the family came North, and earned a modest living
in Boston, where at the period we edited the Girls' Own.
Therein some of H. B.'s early verse had first appearance,
submitted to us with a few ingenuous words stating the
age of the writer,— 11 years. The lines were distinctly
too good for the age; and we could not help instituting
an inquiry that led to acquaintance with the family, poor
but respectable, an acquaintance very soon ripening into
a warm affection only interrupted by her untimely death.
