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

LETTERS. 157
whose child was very sick. The mother said,;' The
medicine don't seem to work as you thought it
would." The nurse replied, "It will work. Trust
in God, ma'am; he's tedious, but he's sure." We
didn't any of us realize in those early days the extent of our privilege in having engaged in a cause
so righteous, with so many earnest, true-hearted, allalive people.
TO JOHN G. WHITTIER.
WVAYLAND, September 10, 1861.
DEAR FRIEND WVHITTIER,-... Nothing on
earth has such effect on the popular heart as songs,
which the soldiers would take up with enthusiasm,
and which it would thereby become the fashion to
whistle and sing at the street corners. " Old John
Brown, Hallelujah! " is performing a wonderful mission now. Where the words came from, nobody
knows, and the tune is an exciting, spirit-stirring
thing, hitherto unknown outside of Methodist conventicles. But it warms up soldiers and boys, and
the air is full of it; just as France was of the Marseillaise, whose author was for years unknown.
If the soldiers only had a song, to some spirit-stirring tune, proclaiming what they went to fight for, or
thought they went to fight for, - for home, country
and liberty, and indignantly announcing that they
did not go to hunt slaves, to send back to their tyrants poor lacerated workmen who for years had been
toiling for the rich without wages; if they had such
a song to a tune that excited them, how rapidly it
would educate them!... Dr. Furness wrote nme
that a young friend of his was a volunteer in a wealthy
aristocratic company that went from Philadelphia.