pers, and the
statements and opinions of Southern public men. It is an effective
book to read even now when one is in a mood to rose-color the old-time
plantation life and doubtful whether anything could be worse than the
present condition of the negro in the South.

The book had two kinds of effect. It brought upon Mrs. Child the
incontinent wrath of all persons who, for any reason, thought that the
only thing to do with slavery was to let it alone. "A lawyer,
afterward attorney-general," a description that fits Caleb Cushing, is
said to have used tongs to throw the obnoxious book out of the window;
the Athenaeum withdrew from Mrs. Child the privileges of its library;
former friends dropped her acquaintance; Boston society shut its doors
upon her; the sale of her books fell off; subscriptions to her
_Juvenile Miscellany_ were discontinued; and the magazine died after a
successful life of eight years; and Mrs. Child found that she had
ventured upon a costly experiment. This consequence she had
anticipated and it had for her no terrors. "I am fully aware," she
says in her preface, "of the unpopularity of the task I have
undertaken; but though I expect ridicule, I do not fear it.... Should
it be the means of advancing even one single hour the inevitable
progress of truth and justice, I would not exchange the consciousness
for all Rothschild's wealth or Sir Walter's fame."

Of course a book of such evident significance and power would have
had another effect; by his own acknowledgement, it brought Dr.
Channing into the anti-slavery crusade, and he published a book upon
slavery in 1835; it led Dr. John G. Palfry, who had inherited a
plantation in Louisiana, to emancipate his slaves; and, as he has more
than once said, it changed the course of Col. T. W. Higginson's life
and made him an abolitionist. "As it was the first anti-slavery work
ever printed in America in book form, so," says Col. Higginson, "I
have always thought it the ablest." Whittier says, "It is no
exaggeration to say that no man or woman at that period rendered more
substantial service to the cause of freedom, or made such a 'great
renunciation' in doing it."

Turning from the real world, which was becoming too hard for her, Mrs.
Child took refuge in dreamland and wrote "Philothea: a story of
Ancient Greece," published in 1835. Critics have objected that this
delightful romance is not an exact reproduction of Greek life, but is
Hamlet a reproduction of a