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

[461] bed-room, and only half of it received the sunshine. But he called the minnikin grass-plot his meadow, and talked very largely about mowing his hay. He covered the walls and fences with flowering vines, and suspended them between the pillars of his little piazza. Even in this employment he revealed the tendencies of his character. One day, when I was helping him train a woodbine, he said, ‘Fasten it in that direction, Maria; for I want it to go over into our neighbor's yard, that it may make their wall look pleasant.’

In the summer of 1848, when I was staying in the country, not far from New-York, I received the following letter from him: ‘Dear Friend, the days have not yet come, in which I can say I have no pleasure in them. Notwithstanding the stubs against which I hit my toes, the briars and thorns that sometimes annoy me, and the muddy sloughs I am sometimes obliged to wade through, yet, after all, the days have not come in which I have no enjoyment. In the course of my journey, I find here and there a green spot, by which I can sit down and rest, and pleasant streams, where I sometimes drink, mostly in secret, and am refreshed. I often remember the saying of a beloved friend, long since translated from this scene of mutation to a state of eternal beatitude: “I wear my sackcloth on my loins; I don't wish to afflict others by carrying a sorrowful countenance.” ’