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

[232]

To Mr.Sewall And Mrs. S. E. Sewall.

You don't know how frequently and how affectionately I think of you, and how I long to have the light of your countenances shine upon me. Mr. and Mrs. S. go over to New York two or three times a week, and I sit alone in my little room and think, think, think. And there is but one who occupies my thoughts more than you two dear, good friends, whom he loved so well. Pope says, “The last years of life, like tickets left in the wheel, rise in value.” It certainly is true of the last friends that remain to us. I have been eminently blest in my few intimate friends, and I think it is mainly owing to the fact that they were all sifted in the anti-slavery sieve ..

On Christmas Eve I went with R. H. to a gathering of O. B. Frothingham's Sunday-school scholars and a troop of poor children whom they had invited to partake with them of the manifold treasures on the Christmas-tree. Oliver Johnson personated Santa Claus, and did it very well, marching round and round in grotesque costume, to the lively tunes played by a colored fiddler. The little folks seemed to enjoy it highly. 0. B. F. made a quaint little speech to them, in which he told them what a good baby Jesus was, never crying for what he ought not to have, never pulling his mother's hair, etc ....

That is all the pleasuring or visiting I have done since I parted from you. My days glide on very quietly and comfortably, and for the sake of others I try to keep from sadness as much as possible.

On Sundays I go to the Unitarian meeting, in an [233] extremely pretty little Gothic chapel, where George W. Curtis reads the best sermons of English and American liberal preachers. The walk of a mile is healthy exercise for me. They have a good organ, and Mr. Curtis reads admirably, so I find it a pleasant change.