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

To Rev. Convers Francis.

Your kind letter in reply to mine was most welcome. The humility with which you say that you “may have been permitted now and then to suggest things not useless to my genius,” sounds oddly enough. Such expressions from a mind so immeasurably superior to mine, in its attainments, would seem to be feigned and excessive, did I not know that you speak sincerely. If I possessed your knowledge, it seems to me as if I could move the whole world. I am often amused and surprised to think how many things I have attempted to do with my scanty stock of learning. I know not how it is, but my natural temperament is such that when I wish to do anything

I seem to have an instinctive faith that I can do it; [30] whether it be cutting and making a garment, or writing a Greek novel. The sort of unconsciousness of danger arising from this is in itself strength. Whence came it? I did not acquire it. But the “whence? how? whither?” of our inward life must always be answered, “From a mystery; in a mystery; to a mystery.” I fully admit your modest suggestion that you have “now and then suggested things useful to me;” but I owe more than tis occasional assistance (I am laughing in my sleeve at your humility, and therefore emphasize) to “the fortunate circumstance of your having come into the world before me.” To your early influence, by conversation, letters, and example, I owe it that my busy energies took a literary direction at all.