Letters of Lydia Maria Child, with a biographical introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips.

210 LETTERS.
scholars and the gentry of England would never have
abolished slavery. It was the mass of working-people that compelled government to take that great step
in human progress; and the movement has a similar
history in this country.
TO JOHN G. WHITTIER.
WAYLAND, January 10, 1871.
I thank you, from my heart, for your volume of
beautiful poems, and for the kind inscription. But
what is the world coming to when a plain-coated
Friend dates " Christmas " instead of Twelfth Month?
If thou departest from the ancient testimonies in this
way, friend John, thou wilt assuredly be dealt with.
I am very indifferent to anything the world can give,
either its pleasures or its honors; and I am very little
prone to envy, but I do envy you your wide-spread
popularity, because it furnishes you with such ample
means to scatter abroad the living seeds of goodness
and truth. Thanks to the Heavenly Father, that the
great opportunity fell into hands that used it so conscientiously and so industriously! For myself, I cannot accomplish much; but I will try to deserve the
acknowledgment, " She bath done what she could."
One of my old-time friends sent me, for a New
Year's present, a book on Siam, by an English lady
who was for several years governess there, in the
king's family.1 I found it extremely interesting. I
have long felt that we Christians greatly wronged the
Buddhists. The precepts of Buddha are wonderfully
large and holy. Whoever he was, he was a man that
dwelt near unto God. His religion is overrun with
1 An English Governess at the Siamese Court, by Mrs. A. H. Leon,
wrens. Boston, 1870.