Lydia Maria Child, Isaac T. Hopper: a true life

[251] Friends, and often preached at their meetings. Her manners were affable, and her conversation peculiarly agreeable to young people. But she knew when silence was seemly, and always restrained her discourse within the limits of discretion. When any of her children talked more than was useful, she was accustomed to administer this concise caution: ‘My dear, it is a nice thing to say nothing, when thou hast nothing to say.’ Her husband was proud of her, and always manifested great deference for her opinion. She suffered much anxiety on account of the perils to which he was often exposed in his contests with slaveholders and kidnappers; and for many years, the thought was familiar to her mind that she might one day see him brought home a corpse. While the yellow fever raged in Philadelphia, she had the same anxiety concerning his fearless devotion to the victims of that terrible disease, who were dying by hundreds around them. But she had a large and sympathizing heart, and she never sought to dissuade him from what he considered the path of duty. When one of his brothers was stricken with the fever, and the family with whom he resided were afraid to shelter him, she proposed to have him brought under their own roof, where he was carefully nursed till he died. She was more reluctant to listen to his urgent entreaties that she would retire into the country with the children, and