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

226 LETTERS.
to him for all his magnificent services to freedom and
public morals. In the anguish of my heart I cry out,
"Enemies wrote to him, and friends did not! And
all the while he was dying by inches! "
Processions and flowers and panegyrics have become so much a matter of custom that they are generally distasteful to me, as are all things that degenerate into forms without significance. But the homage
to the memory of Charles Sumner seems to be really
spontaneous and almost universal. It is a great consolation to me, not only because he richly deserved
it, but because it is a good omen from the nation.
There has been nothing like it except the mourning
for Abraham Lincoln; and in both cases it was preeminently honesty of character to which the people
paid spontaneous homage. They reverenced the men
because they trusted them.
TO THE SAME.
1874.
I try not to be anxious about my future, and to
feel a trust that "something will turn up." With
regard to out-door work, something did " turn up,"
in a wonderful way, when dear David's hands became
too lame to do his customary jobs. The husband of
the woman who has washed and scoured for me has
for many years acted " like Cain;" drinking up all
his wages, and maltreating his wife; and at last he
set fire to a barn, and burnt up a dozen cattle, because
the man who had employed him hid his rum-bottle.
He received the mild sentence of two years in the
House of Correction. I hoped he would die there; I
felt as if I could never endure the sight of him again.
But when he came here of an errand, the day he had