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

To the same.

I have been travelling through dark and thorny places, dear, where there were no roses of thought to send to you; and ever overhead has been the great murky cloud of public affairs that will not scatter and let the sunshine through.

I am glad, dear, that new bright links are being continually added to your life. To me there come no changes but sad ones; no new links — only the continually dropping away, one after another, of the old ones. The decease of my brother adds greatly to my loneliness. In my isolated position, he was [173] almost my only medium with the world of intellect. How much my mind has owed to him can never be described. I loved him, too, and this separation, so utterly unexpected, rouses up a thousand memories of childhood and youth. During the last month of his life I was going backward and forward often to see him. I was with him the last eight days, and with him when his soul departed on its mysterious journey to the unknown. Oh, how I suffered! It tore me all to pieces. And now, in the spring-time, I cannot make the renovation of nature seem cheerful. But why should I cast my shadow over you? I told you of my sad experiences mainly to account for my neglected correspondence.

I am rejoiced that Robert is so well pleased with his regiment. The Lord seems to have inspired the colored people to behave remarkably well all through this terrible conflict. When I was in Boston, last week, I said to Edmund Quincy that never in the course of my observation, or in my reading of human history, had I seen the hand of Providence so signally manifested as in the events of this war. He replied in a very characteristic way: “Well, Mrs. Child, when the job is done up, I hope it will prove creditable to Providence.” My own belief is that it will. Think of Victor Hugo's writing a tragedy with John Brown for its hero! A French John Brown! It is too funny. I wonder what the old captain himself would think of it if he were present in Paris at its representation. I fancy he would be as much surprised at the portraiture as would the honest wife of Joseph the carpenter, with her troop of dark-eyed girls and boys, Joses and James and Jude, etc., if she were told that the image of the “immaculate [174] Virgin” Mary, with spangled robe and tinselled crown, was a likeness of her.