The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964 Page: 586
672 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
"what to come in yours and my discharge." Mrs. M., as her friends
called her, did not travel far to find where to put responsibility: it
began at home. She dreamed great dreams; many dreams she made
reality.
Her temperament did not allow her to sit idly by with folded hands
to await developments; instead, it caused her to bring things to a
focus. To walk with head erect was essential to her; within her was
a quick pace.
At times, nothing seemed to restrain her. She grasped all learning
within her reach. When she was ten years of age, for example, she
saw, through the wrapping addressed to a resident of the little town
of Loyal Valley where her father was postmaster, Jules Verne's newly
published book, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. She care-
fully unwrapped the book, sat in the office the entire day devouring
the work, then put it back into its wrapping. When the person to
whom it was addressed arrived, the ten-year-old confessed what she
had done. The owner of the book immediately invited her to read
it a second time.
Although German was the language spoken in her home, Spanish
was learned from the family tutors so well that when in due course
she came to her husband's ranch, the Mexican shepherds said: "Your
wife speaks correct, like a book." In the hospital, during Mrs. M's
last illness, a three-year-old Mexican child, disconsolate because no
one could understand her, lay weeping. Mrs. M. was able to comfort
the little one in her own language.
Lucy Meusebach never attended a public school after she was ten,
when the family left New Braunfels. She assimilated all that the tutors
presented, however, and as a result of a competitive examination,
received a scholarship to Sam Houston Normal Institute. Her record
there was such that at Commencement she was cited for special
honors. With her return to her home community at the juncture of
Mason, Gillespie, and Llano counties, she became a teacher. She
spread learning, she tried the untried, she helped solve problems;
she was an awakening force wherever she went throughout that sec-
tion. Every community in which she taught felt the stimulus of her
energy and her desire to make time count. With her deft pencil or
brush, she often illustrated how opportunity must be caught by the
forelock.
Her family, in 1898, had the first and only telephone for miles
around. She shared its advantages with everybody in the neighbor-
hood. Her desire to share is typified in the following actions.
Years before the practice of grafting fruit trees and grapevines became
general, Mrs. M. learned the technique. She demonstrated it in many
orchards. In later years, she received acknowledgment in the form
of baskets of fruit. A piano, kept largely for the purpose of helping586
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964, periodical, 1964; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101197/m1/664/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.