Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson

I have been reading your paper on Celia Thaxter with such pleasure that I wish to express it, and also to make one or two minor criticisms. I do not see what you mean by saying that Levi Thaxter “went as a missionary to the wild fisher folk at Star.” He was at that time my most intimate friend and we corresponded constantly. He and Weiss went, not to Star, but to the lighthouse to board with the Leightons, and were so delighted that Levi and Leighton bought Appledore (not then so named) and built the hotel — a foolish enterprise for him, it was generally thought. I don't remember his ever living at Star, and to call any interest he had in the fishermen a “missionary” feeling seems to me quite an error. He had a great fancy for them and had a special pet named John, after whom he named “John's Cove” and then his second boy, but the word “missionary,” seems to me quite out of place and to give a wrong picture of him. Should you reprint the paper I wish you would consider this.

I think that on the whole you handle the difficult subject of the relation between the two with great delicacy and substantial truth. . . . The more she plunged with eagerness into the novelty of social