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To Miss Lucy Osgood.

Wayland, 1865.
I thank you for your two right pleasant letters. I have several times been amused at being charged with totally different deficiencies by different people. You accuse me of “being indifferent to externals,” whereas the common charge against me is that I think too much of beauty, and say too much about it. I myself think it is one of my greatest weaknesses. A handsome man, woman, or child, can always make a fool and a pack-horse of me. My next neighbor's little boy has me completely under his thumb, merely by virtue of his beautiful eyes and sweet voice.

I have been a very happy woman since this year came in. My Sunset book 1 has had most unexpected success. The edition of 4,000 sold before New Year's Day, and they say they might have sold 2,000 more if they had been ready. This pleases me beyond measure, for the proceeds, whether more or less, were vowed to the freedmen; and cheering old folks with one hand, and helping the wronged and suffering with the other, is the highest recreation I ever enjoyed. Nobles or princes cannot discover, or invent, any pleasure equal to earning with one hand and giving with the other. I seldom have a passing wish [186] for enlarged means except for the sake of doing more for others. My own wants are very few and simple. I am glad you approve of the book. I am not surprised that the “Mysterious pilgrimage” seemed to you “fanciful.” You know there is a practical side and a poetic side to me. In a book designed for general readers, I thought it best to show both sides. What most pleases one class of readers will be less pleasing to others. I am surprised that you say nothing about Bernard Palissy. He is perfectly charming to me. My prime object in making the Sunset book was to present old people with something wholly cheerful. Human nature, as the years pass on, more and more requires cheerful influences. Memory has a superabounding stock of sadness for all, and any addition to it in books or conversation is an unwelcome excess. To everything there is a bright side and a dark side; and I hold it to be unwise, unphilosophic, unkind to others, and unhealthy for one's own soul, to form the habit of looking on the dark side. Cheerfulness is to the spiritual atmosphere what sunshine is to the earthly landscape. I am resolved to cherish cheerfulness with might and main.

William C. Bryant wrote me a charming note about the book. I will quote part of it to you, because I know you like to hear of anything pleasant that happens to me. He says: “My dear Mrs. Child, you are like some artists, who excel in ‘sunset’ views. You give the closing stage of human life an atmosphere of the richest lights and warmest hues, and make even its clouds add to its glory. My wife and I have read your book with great delight.” And while I am talking of the pleasant things that [187] have happened to me lately I will ask, “What do you think I had for a New year's present?” Mrs. L., bless her kind soul! sent me Milmore's bust of Charles Sumner. Now the fact is, I had a private longing for that bust, though I never mentioned it to any mortal. I did once think about inquiring the price; but I remembered the freedmen and the soldiers, and resolved not to put myself in the way of temptation. It is not only a good likeness, but it is a wonderfully speaking likeness, full of the noble soul of the man.

1 Looking towards Sunset. From Sources Old and New, Original and Selected. By L. Maria Child. Boston, 1864.

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