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

232 LETTERS.
TO MR. AND MRS. S. E. SEWALL.
STATEN ISLAND, January 10, 1875.
You don't know how frequently and how affectionately I think of you, and how I long to have the
light of your countenances shine upon me. Mr. and
Mrs. S. go over to New York two or three times a
week, and I sit alone in my little room and think,
think, think. And there is but one who occupies
my thoughts more than you two dear, good friends,
whom he loved so well. Pope says, " The last years
of life, like tickets left in the wheel, rise in value."
It certainly is true of the last friends that remain to
us. I have been eminently blest in my few intirmate friends, and I think it is mainly owing to the
fact that they were all sifted in the anti-slavery
sieve....
On Christmas Eve I went with R. H. to a gathering of O. B. Frothingham's Sunday-school scholars
and a troop of poor children whom they had invited
to partake with them of the manifold treasures on
the Christmas-tree. Oliver Johnson personated Santa
Claus, and did it very well, marching round and
round in grotesque costume, to the lively tunes played
by a colored fiddler. The little folks seemed to enjoy it highly. 0. B. F. made a quaint little speech
to them, in which he told them what a good baby
Jesus was, never crying for what he ought not to
have, never pulling his mother's hair, etc...
That is all the pleasuring or visiting I have done
since I parted from you. My days glide on very
quietly and comfortably, and for the sake of others
I try to keep from sadness as much as possible.
On Sundays I go to the Unitarian meeting, in an