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

40 LETTERS.
the revolving worlds keep their places. The sun is
their necessity, centrifugal force their strong freewill. And those two opposing ideas, which regulate
the motion of the stars, are constantly taking form in
the most trivial actions of my daily life. By my
soul, though free-will has a hard battle in these latter
times, necessity presses like a patent screw.
TO THE SAME.
NORTHAMPTON, January, 1841.
I marvel that you, who are no stranger to philosophy in its best sense, and who have the highest
peaks of your mind at least a little gilded with transcendentalism, suppose that the " deadening drudgery
of the world" can "imprison the soul in caverns."
It is not merely an eloquent phrase, but a distinct
truth, that the outward has no power over us but
that which we voluntarily give it. It is not I who
drudge, it is merely the case containing me. I defy
all the powers of earth and hell to make me scour
floors and feed pigs, if I choose meanwhile to be off
conversing with the angels..... You are right, my
dear brother, to attribute such freshness as I have to
a vivid religious sentimnent, not a theological tenet.
If I can in quietude and cheerfulness forego my own
pleasure, and relinquish my own tastes, to administer
to my father's daily comfort, I seem to those who
live in shadows to be cooking food or mixing medicines; but I am in fact; making divine works of art,
which will reveal to nie their fair proportions in the
far eternity. If I can smother the rising anger, and
melt wrath with love, I have written a glorious piece
of imusic, to be sung in my " Father's house of many
mansions." Nay, more, perhaps I am doing somewhat