sary for me to leave home to be earning
somewhat, I am thankful that my work is for the anti-slavery cause. I
have agreed to stay one year. I hope I shall then be able to return to
my husband and rural home, which is humble enough, yet very
satisfactory to me. Should the _Standard_ be continued, and my editing
generally desired, perhaps I could make an arrangement to send
articles from Northampton. At all events, I trust the weary separation
from my husband is not to last more than a year. If I am to be away
from him, I could not be more happily situated than in Friend Hopper's
family. They treat me the same as a daughter and a sister."

The _Anti-Slavery Standard_ was a new enterprise; its editorship was
offered to Mr. and Mrs. Childs jointly; Col. Higginson says that Mr.
Child declined because of ill health; another authority, that he was
still infatuated with his Beet Sugar, of which Mrs. Child had had more
than enough; it appears from her letter that neither of them dreamed
of abandoning the Sugar industry; if the enterprise was folly, they
were happily united in the folly.

However, of the two, the _Anti-Slavery Standard_ was the more
successful enterprise, and at the end of the two years, Mr. Child
closed out his Beet Sugar business and joined Mrs. Child in editing
the paper. Mrs. Child edited the _Standard_ eight years, six of which
were in conjunction with Mr. Child. They were successful editors; they
gave the _Standard_ a high literary character, and made it acceptable
to people of taste and culture who, whatever their sympathy with
anti-slavery, were often repelled by the unpolished manners of Mr.
Garrison's paper, _The Liberator_.

Something of her life outside the _Standard_ office, something of the
things she saw and heard and enjoyed, during these eight years, can be
gathered from her occasional letters to the Boston _Courier_. They are
interesting still; they will always be of interest to one who cares to
know old New York, as it was sixty years ago, or from 1840 onward.
That they were appreciated then is evident from the fact that,
collected and published in two volumes in 1844, eleven editions were
called for during the next eight years. Col. Higginson considers these
eight years in New York the most interesting and satisfactory of Mrs.
Child's life.

Though we have room for few incidents of this period, there is one
too charming to be omitted. A friend went to a flower merchant on
Broadway to buy