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

LETTERS. 239
TO MIRS. S. B. SHAW.
WAYLAND, 1876.
I have been gadding unusually for me. I went to
the meeting of the Free Religious Association, where
I was sorely tempted to speak, because the only
woman who did speak was so flippant and conceited
that I was ashamed of her. In the same excursion, I
spent a day and night at Concord, with the Alcotts.
Mrs. Alcott was a friend of my youth, and the sister
of my dear friend, S. J. May. We had a charming
time, talking over the dear old eventful times. I
like L. and her artist-sister, M., very much. Some
people complain that they are brusque; but it is
merely because they are very straightforward and
sincere. They have a Christian hatred of lionizing;
and the Leo Hunters are a very numerous and impertinent family. Moreover, they don't like conventional fetters any better than I do. There have been
many attempts to saddle and bridle me, and teach
me to keep step in respectable processions; but they
have never got the lasso over my neck yet, and' "old
hoss " as I am now, if I see the lasso in the air, I
snort and gallop off, determined to be a free horse
to the last, and put up with the consequent lack of
grooming and stabling.
The house of the Alcotts took my fancy greatly.
When they bought the place the house was so very
old that it was thrown into the bargain, with the
supposition that it was fit for nothing but fire-wood.
But Mr. Alcott has an architectural taste more intelligible than his Orphic Sayings. He let every old
rafter and beam stay in its place, changed old ovens
and ash-holes into Saxon-arched alcoves, and added