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

LETTERS. 67
make with Fredrika in Boston! She will have no
peace of her life. I hope they will not be ambitious
of burying her by the side of Dr. Spurzheim.
TO MIRS. NATHANIEL SILSBEE.
WEST NEWTON [Mass.], September 14, 1850.
The morning after you left, when I opened the
front door I found a box against it which proved to
be the box. My dear lady, you are too overpowering
in your goodness! It made me cry to see how you
loaded me with benefits. But I pray you curb your
generosity a little. I love you for your own sake,
and if in some unlucky hour my conscience whispers
to my heart that I ought to love you because you are
so good to me, then it will be hot work, for my
savage love of freedom will resist the claim like a
tiger. So pray don't bring me into such a dilemma.
The pitcher is a superb affair. Antique and classical
to my heart's content. I seem to be very anti-temperance in my surroundings. The pitcher is tipsy,
my beautiful young Cupidon has his heart merry with
wine, the head of my sacrificial bull is crowned with
grapes, and my candlesticks are interwoven grapevines. Luckily, I have no weakness of that sort. If
myrtle wreaths abounded everywhere, I might feel a
little conscious. You say the candlesticks are associated with pleasant times in New York, which we
shall never have again. How do you know that, lady
fair? I have been saddened by such a thought sometimes, but there gleamed across the shadow a bright
idea that perhaps some day you and I would set off
to New York a-pleasuming, afoot and alone. I could
stay quietly at Friend Hopper's while you flirted
among the fashionables, and when you had leisure,