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

LETTERS. 77
This is the second time I have walked out in stormy
weather without a cloak. My " Appeal " in favor of
anti-slavery, and attacking colonization, marched
into the enemy's camp alone. It brought Dr. Channing to see me, for the first time; and he told me it
had stirred up his mind to the conviction that he
ought not to remain silent on the subject. Then
came Dr. Palfrey, who, years afterward, said that
the emancipation of his slaves might be traced to the
impulse that book had given him. Charles Sumner
writes me that the influence of my anti-slavery writings years ago has had an important effect on his
course in Congress.... Who cal tell how many
young minds may be so influenced by the "Progress
of Religious Ideas " as to materially change their career? I trust I have never impelled any one in the
wrong direction. In the simplest things I write,
whether for children or grown people, I always try
to sow some seeds for freedom, truth, and humanity.
S. J. May writes to me very warmly about the big
nook. He says he has commended it from his pulpit, as "; the most valuable contribution to an enlarged, charitable, and true theology that has been
made by any one in our country." Of course, you
will not understand him as meaning to compare me
with such minds as Theodore Parker; but he considers my book more valuable than those written by
many abler pens, because it is not written in the
spirit of an opponent to prevailing false theologies.
You are right in supposing that while engaged on
that work I " felt like an inhabitant of the second and
third centuries." Everything around me seemed foreign, as it did when I came out of Athens into Boston, after writing " Philothea." That was a pleasant