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

222 LETTERS.
portion of the awful drunkenness that prevails is owing to the moral weakness that cannot withstand
temptation continually placed right before the eyes.
Unfortunately, alcohol is needed in medicine and in
various arts, but for these purposes a few wholesale
depositories are sufficient. I grow more and more
strict about temperance. I do not now manufacture
currant wine for the sick, as I used to do.
TO MRS. S. B. SHAW.
WAYLAND, 1874.
How cheering Mrs. Somerville's Life is, as a proof
of the capabilities of woman! And how it makes me
mourn over the frivolous, wasted life of women in
general!
John Stuart Mill's biography made me sad for
him. He had too much soul to have it entirely
pressed to death; but I believe he would have been
a much greater man, and certainly a much happier
one, if it had not been for that loveless, dreary childhood, that incessant drilling, that cramming of his
boyish brain, that pitiless crushing out of all spontanleity. With regard to his writings, I do not always like his tone, or always agree with his conclusions. It jarred upon my feelings to have him
decide that because evil existed, therefore the Creator
of the universe was either not all-good, or else he
was not all-powerful. I grant that, taking the very
limited view we finite beings are capable of, as many
facts could, perhaps, be brought forward to prove that
the world was made by a malevolent Being as that
it was made by a benevolent Being; but we are such
a small part of the whole, that it seems to me presumptuous to deny that the apparent discord may be