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

[201] price seven dollars, as a birthday present for my philological mate. His habit of digging for the origin of words has proved contagious, and he often expresses surprise at the help my quick guesses afford him in his patient researches. I resolutely read Max Muller's “Science of language,” and picked up a good many new ideas and valuable suggestions; but to read it with full understanding required a great deal more learning than I possess.

A friend is accustomed to say that my “bark is worse than my bite ;” and it is something so with regard to my theological intolerance. For instance, I have given yearly to the American Missionary Association, ever since emancipation, twenty dollars a year, to help them support a teacher among the freedmen, true blue orthodox. Yet when I proposed to them to aid me in the circulation of my “Freedmen's book,” offering them several hundred volumes at the mere cost of materials, they were not willing to do it unless they could be allowed to cut out several articles, and in lieu thereof insert orthodox tracts about “redeeming blood,” etc. Yet my book contained not one sectarian word, except here and there an orthodox phrase in articles written by colored people. I do sincerely believe that all creeds which make faith in doctrines of more importance than the practice of morality have an injurious effect on character, and I abominate them.

One of my neighbors told me there was a biographical sketch of me in the “Christian Register,” copied from the “Chicago Tribune.” But I did not wish to see it, having a great aversion to newspaper publicity. I care a good deal what my friends think of my performances, but I am singularly indifferent