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

LET7TERS 137
with him ride a troop of sharp-shooters from all sects.
If you turn to the literature of England or France,
vou xvill find your institution treated with as little
favor. The fact is, the whole civilized world proclaims slavery an outlaw, and the best intellect of the
age is active in hunting it down.
L. MARIA CHILD.
TO MRS. S. M. PARSONS.
WAYLAND, December, 1859.
I thank you very cordially for your affectionate
letter, and I am right glad you and your husband
were so much pleased with my doings. Recent events
have renewved my youth and strength, and filled me
with electricity, and one word of apology for slavery
makes the sparks fly. What a sublime martyrdom
wvas that of old John Brown! There was nothing
wanting in the details of his conduct. There was a
grand simplicity and harmony throughout.
I reverenced him for refusing to be prayed over by
slave-holding priests; and how my heart jumped toward him, when I read of his kissing the little colored child, on his way to the gallows! In last night's
"Liberator " there is a very touching letter, which I
received from a colored man in Ohio, about John
Brown. You will see it, for I hear you have subscribed for that paper. The colored people in Boston held a prayer-meeting all day, on the 2d 1 of December, and I chose to spend that solemn day with
them. There was nothing there to jar upon the tender sadness of my feelings. There was no one to
I The 2d of December, 1859, was the day on which John Brovwn
was hanged