we have only her reply, from which it
appears her father is under her care. She declines her brother's
sympathy, and wonders that he can suppose "the deadening drudgery of
the world" can imprison a soul in its caverns. "It is not merely an
eloquent phrase," she says, "but a distinct truth that the outward has
no power over us but that which we voluntarily give it. It is not I
who drudge; it is merely the case that contains me. I defy all the
powers of earth and hell to make me scour floors and feed pigs, if I
choose meanwhile to be off conversing with angels.... If I can in
quietude and cheerfulness forego my own pleasures and relinquish my
tastes, to administer to my father's daily comfort, I seem to those
who live in shadows to be cooking food and mixing medicines, but I am
in fact making divine works of art which will reveal to me their fair
proportions in the far eternity." Besides this consolation, she says,
"Another means of keeping my soul fresh is my intense love of nature.
Another help, perhaps stronger than either of the two, is domestic
love."

Her Northampton life was nearer an end than she supposed when she
wrote these letters; she did not spend the next year in the little
farm house with "two rooms and a garret"; on May 27th, she dates a
letter from New York city, where she has gone reluctantly to edit the
_Anti-Slavery Standard_. She had been translated from the sphere of
"cooking food and mixing medicines" to congenial literary occupations;
she had, let us hope, a salary sufficient for her urgent necessities;
her home was in the family of the eminent Quaker philanthropist, Isaac
T. Hopper, who received her as a daughter, and whose kindness she
repaid by writing his biography. However the venture might come out,
we would think her life could not well be harder or less attractive
than it had been, drudging in a dilapidated farm house, and we are
glad she is well out of it. Strange to say, she did not take our view
of the situation. We have already seen how independent she was of
external circumstances. In a letter referred to, dated May 27, she
chides a friend for writing accounts of her outward life: "What do I
care whether you live in one room or six? I want to know what your
spirit is doing. What are you thinking, feeling, and reading?... My
task here is irksome enough. Your father will tell you that it was not
zeal for the cause, but love for my husband, which brought me hither.
But since it was neces