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

196 LETTERS.
a strong resistance to all sorts of ritual. Moreover,
this book of Scheffer's seems to me uncommonly lugubrious of its kind. I read a few of the poems, and
they made me feel so forlorn that I hastened to hide
the book away in a receptacle that I keep for things
not cheerful to read, and consequently not profitable
to lend. The world is so full of sadness that I more
and more make it a point to avoid all sadness that
does not come within the sphere of my duty.
I read only " chipper" books. I hang prisms in my
windows to fill the room with rainbows; I gaze at all
the bright pictures in shop windows; I cultivate the
gayest flowers; I seek cheerfulness in every possible
way. This is my " necessity in being old." Then
you know I never did like the things that "good
people" like. Ritual was always antagonistic to my
temperament; it interferes with my free-will, and my
free-will grows more rampant every year I live. And
now having blown my blast against the "saint's "
book, I thank you sincerely for your friendly intention in sending it; that I shall cherish in my memory
though I consign the book to oblivion. The poems
are certainly pure, solid good sense; dreadful solid.
TO MISS ELIZA SCUDDER.
WAYLAND, 1868.
In our climate what a misnomer it is to call this
season spring! very much like calling Calvinism religion. I don't care, I insist upon being glad that I
was born in Massachusetts. As for anybody that
prefers to have been born among mosquitoes and copperheads down South, or where the sun sets behind
the Golden Gate, why let them go and be born again.
I, being rather a Puritanic person, stand by old Mas.