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

92 LETTERS.
As for " come-outerism," I assure you that if I could
only find a church, I would nestle into it as gladly as
a bird ever nestled into her covert in a storm. I
have stayed away from meeting, because one offered
me petrifactions, and another gas, when I was hungry
for bread. I have an unfortunate sincerity, which
demands living realities, and will not be put off with
respectable shams. I sometimes wish it were otherwise; there is such a plenty of respectable shams to
be had without the seeking. Another thing that I
really feel the want of is one or two sympathizing
friends with a sufficient degree of culture to make
intercourse easy and mutually agreeable. I am well
aware that it is not good to live so much alone as I
do; but I see no help for it. Better to be forever
alone than to have an indiscriminate inrush of the
world into one's sanctum. I find the problem of useful and agreeable social intercourse a very hard one
to solve. If our minister, Mr. Sears, were near by, I
should scarcely feel the need of any other society;
for his mind and heart are full to overflowing. But
unfortunately he lives two miles off, on an out-of-theway road, and it is a job to get to him. He has
lately been preaching a series of beautiful sermons on
the immortality of the soul. The one last Sunday
was on entering upon immortality through the long
pathway of old age. It was excellent in itself, and
interested me so much by its association with my
good old father that I borrowed it, and made copious
extracts. To me there is a peculiar charmn in Mr.
Sears' preaching; for a kind of lunar-halo of Swedenborgianism surrounds it. My first and deepest religious experience came to me through that medium
and such an experience is never entirely forgotten by