Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My dear Margaret,—I was very much delighted with your present of the slippers. They are too pretty to be trodden under foot; yet such is their destiny, and shall be accomplished, as soon as may be. The colors look beautifully upon the drab ground; much more so than on the black. Don't you think so? I should have answered your note, and sent you my thanks, by Alexander on Wednesday last; but when I last saw him, I had not received the package. Therefore you must not imagine from my delay, that I do not sufficiently appreciate the gift. . . .

There is nothing very new in Boston, which after all is a gossiping kind of Little Peddlington, if you know what that is; if you don't, you must read the story. People take too much cognizance of their neighbors; interest themselves too much in what no way concerns them. However, it is no great matter.

There are Indians here: savage fellows;— one Black-Hawk and his friends, with naked shoulders and red blankets wrapped about their