The great brick academy at neighboring "Lower Trappe"
boarded and educated the brightest youths of the best families on the
Peninsula; and these perceived, as the annual summers brought their
fulness, what portion of their beauty remained with Vesta Custis. She
was like Helen of Troy, a subject of homage and dispute in childhood,
and became a woman, in men's consideration, almost imperceptibly. Sent
to Baltimore to be educated, her return was followed by suitors--not
youthful admirers only, but mature ones--and the young men of the
Peninsula remarked with chagrin: "None of us have a chance! Some great
city nabob will get her."
But the academy boys and visitors, and the townspeople, had one common
opportunity to see her and to hear her--when she sang, every Sabbath and
church day, in the Episcopal church.
Her voice was the natural expression of her beauty--sweet, powerful,
free, and easily trained. A divine bird seemed hidden in the old church
when this noble yet tender voice broke forth; but they who turned to see
the singer who had made such Paradise, looked almost on Eve herself.
She was rather slight, tall, and growing fuller slowly every year, like
one in whom growth was early, yet long, and who would wholly mature not
until near middle life. Her head, however, was perfection, even in
girlhood, not less by its proportions than its carriage: her graceful
figure bore it like the slender setting, holding up the first splendor
of the peach; a head of vital and spiritual beauty, where purity and
luxuriance, woman and mind, dwelt in harmony and joy.
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