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

INTAOnDUC'TIOI'. xvii
him wonderfully witty. Onice, when he said,'I wish for
your sake, dcear, I were as rich as Croesus,' I answered,'You a(re Croesus, for you are king of Lydia.' How often
he used to quote that!': His mind vwas unclouded to the last. He had a passion
for philology, and only eight hours before he passed away
he wvas searching out the derivation of a word."
Her wvell-stored mind tandc fine conversational gifts
made her company alwavys desirable. No one who
listened to her can forget the earnest eloquence with
which she used to dvwell upon the evidences from history, tradition, and experience, of the superhuman
and supernatural; or with what ea.ger interest she
detected in the mysteries of the old religions of the
world the germs of a purer faith andc a holier hope.
She loved to listen, as in St. Pierre's symposium of
"'The Coffee-House of Surat," to the confessions of
faith of all:sects and schools of philosophy, Christian
and pagan, and gather from them the consoling truTth
that our Father has nowhere left his children wvithout
some witness of himself. She loved the old mystics,
and lingered wntil curious interest and sympathy over
the writings of BS;hme, Swedenborg, MIolinos, anl
WoVoolman. Yet this marked speculative tendency
seemed not in the slightest, degree to affect her practical activities. Her mysticism and realism rLanr in
close parallel lines without interfering -with each other.
With stritong rationalistic tendencies from education
and couniction, she found herself in spiritual accord
with the pious introversion of Thomas i Kempis
and Mladamle Guion. She was fond of Christmas Eve
stories, of warnings, signs, and spiritual intimations,
her half belief in which sometimes seemed like creldulitv to her auditors. James Russell Lowell, in his
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