To Mrs. S. M. Parsons.
Boston, December, 1876.
Your parcel arrived Christmas forenoon, and was most welcome.
For nine days I had been unable to stir out of the house, on account of the fearfully slippery walking, and I was feeling very forlorn among strangers.
The weather also was cloudy and chilly, and your little parcel came in like a sunbeam through a fog. Thank you a thousand times.
The views are very fine.
Perhaps the lady who carved the beautiful head in butter took the him from Canova, who, as a boy, first attracted attention by the beautiful ornaments he carved in butter for a nobleman's table.
I thank Henry cordially for the little book of poems.
I always read eagerly any poem I see signed “J. W. Chadwick.”
The one entitled “The two Waitings” is about the loveliest poem I ever read.
I copied it into my extract book long ago. The lines “No more Sea” are beautiful.
They seemed to bear my drooping spirits up on angel's wings.As for our national affairs, I submit, as one must do, to things that cannot be helped. I am greatly disheartened, but not much disappointed. I have no patience with Republicans who refrained from voting on the plea that both parties were so corrupt there was nothing to choose between them. I am very [243] weary of the fashionable optimism which calls one thing as good as another thing, thus undermining all distinctions between right and wrong. The “Good Lord and good devil” style, so habitually adopted by Mr — does not suit my taste. I liked Garrison's earnest, straightforward letter to James Freeman Clarke.
