Children of Air

Jennie Belle Holly and Ella Mae Holly.  Watercolor on Yupo, from antique photos found at a consignment shop

One of my pleasures is browsing through old photographs in shops.  I love the serious poses, the clothing of these unknown people.  It's sad seeing these pictures sold as curiosities.  Surely these girls were daughters, sisters, wives, mothers.  Why aren't they cherished in someone's family album?  Jennie Belle and Ella Mae, photographed by a St. Louis photographer, were identified.  I think they were from the 1860s, based on some other pictures in the stack. Long since grown up and gone away, they are "children of air".

To Any Reader

by Robert Louis Stevenson

As from the house your mother sees

You playing round the garden trees,

So you may see, if you will look

Through the windows of this book,

Another child, far, far away,

In another garden, play.

But do not think  you can at all,

By knocking on the window, call

That child to hear you.  His intent

Is all on his play-business bent.

He does not hear; he will not look.

Nor yet be lured out of this book.

For, long ago, the truth to say,

He has grown up and gone away,

And it is but a child of air

That lingers in the garden there.