Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe, Florence Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, in two volumes, with portraits and other illustrations: volume 1

To Laura

As poor Susan Bigelow once wrote me:--

The Buffalo lies in his lonely lair,
No friend nor agent visits him there.

She was lame at the time, and I had once called her, by mistake, “Mrs. Buffalo.” Well, perfidious William,¹ rivalling in tyranny the Sultan of Turkey, has forbidden me to leave this floor. So here I sit, growly and bad, but obliged to acquiescence in W.'s sentence....

To Maud

First place, darling, dismiss from your mind the idea that reasonable people to-day believe that the souls of men in the pre-Christian world were condemned and lost. The old religions are generally considered to-day as necessary steps in the religion of the human race, and therefore as part of the plan of a beneficent Providence. The Jews were people of especial religious genius, producing a wonderful religious literature, and Christianity, which came out of Judaism, is, to my belief, the culmination of the religious sense of mankind. But Paul himself says, speaking to the Athenians, that “God hath not left himself without a witness,” at any time. I was brought up, of course, in