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

152 LETTERS.
TO MISS LUCY SEARLE.
WAYLAND, June 5, 1861.
I return "Silas Marner " with cordial thanks. It
entertained me greatly. His honest attempts at education were extremely amusing. What a genuine
touch of nature was " Eppie in the tole hole! " What
a significant fact it is in modern literature, that the
working class are so generally the heroes. No princes
in disguise are necessary now to excite an interest in
the reader. The popular mind is educated up to the
point of perceiving that carpenters, weavers, etc., are
often real princes in disguise. The longer I live, the
more entirely and intensely do my sympathies go
with the masses.
I am glad to see some amendment with regard to
sending back fugitive slaves. Those at Fort Monroe
are to be protected so long as Virginia continues in
rebellion. God grant that all the slave-holders may
rebel, and remain in rebellion, till the emancipation
of their slaves is accomplished! Success to Jeff. Davis, till he goads the free States into doing, from policy and revenge, what they have not manhood to do
from justice and humanity! It is a dreadful thing,
a most demoralizing thing, to have the laws of one's
country at such variance with the laws of God. I
never realized it so fully as when I heard your good,
conscientious, intelligent friend say that he would
oend back a fugitive slave because the Constitution
required it. When our fathers joined hands with
slave-holders to form the Constitution, with their feet
sn the prostrate and helpless slaves, they did sad
work for their descendants. If mly father had made
a compact with a rich neighbor that I would help