Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

[217] and whose reverence was bestowed both on Jesus and Buddha, because they recognized a tender self-sacrificing spirit in both! Those women are not degraded by polygamy as we should be, simply because they are not conscious of degradation. Some one said very wisely, “How unlike in character is the nakedness of a courtesan and the nakedness of a savage 1” There are no gardens of the human soul anywhere so neglected that God has not placed in them “flaming cherubims that turn every way to guard the Tree of Life.”

Did Mrs. Leonowens's first book ever reach Siam? If so, has she ever heard how it was received? I judge that the young king's desire to emulate President Lincoln must have been in a good degree owing to her influence, though she very modestly says nothing about it. What a blessing to be able to carry light into dark corners of the world, and then see from afar how the little candle spreads its rays! Christian missionaries might have done much to modify the laws and customs of all the world, if they had only been less theological. ....

It sometimes seems rather hard that I should be so entirely shut out from all intellectual intercourse, but I don't know how to arrange it otherwise, consistently with the discharge of my duty. It is not “eccentricity,” as many people call it; it is owing to peculiar circumstances not of my own creating, and which my energy and caution are powerless to change. Nobody could understand it unless they had experienced it. But I have many, many blessings; the chiefest of which are the dear friends I have. God bless them for illuminating and cheering my life as they have done.