ull of promise; our
industrial and financial condition is hopeful. God grant that, while our
material interests prosper, the moral and spiritual influence of the
occasion may be permanently felt; that the solemn sacrament of Sorrow,
whereof we have been made partakers, may be blest to the promotion of the
righteousness which exalteth a nation.

LYDIA MARIA CHILD.

In 1882 a collection of the Letters of Lydia Maria Child was
published, for which I wrote the following sketch, as an
introduction:--

In presenting to the public this memorial volume, its compilers deemed
that a brief biographical introduction was necessary; and as a labor of
love I have not been able to refuse their request to prepare it.

Lydia Maria Francis was born in Medford, Massachusetts, February 11,
1802. Her father, Convers Francis, was a worthy and substantial citizen
of that town. Her brother, Convers Francis, afterwards theological
professor in Harvard College, was some years older than herself, and
assisted her in her early home studies, though, with the perversity of an
elder brother, he sometimes mystified her in answering her questions.
Once, when she wished to know what was meant by Milton's "raven down of
darkness," which was made to smile when smoothed, he explained that it
was only the fur of a black cat, which sparkled when stroked! Later in
life this brother wrote of her, "She has been a dear, good sister to me
would that I had been half as good a brother to her." Her earliest
teacher was an aged spinster, known in the village as "Marm Betty,"
painfully shy, and with many oddities of person and manner, the never-
forgotten calamity of whose life was that Governor Brooks once saw her
drinking out of the nose of her tea-kettle. Her school was in her
bedroom, always untidy, and she was a constant chewer of tobacco but the
children were fond of her, and Maria and her father always carried her a
good Sunday dinner. Thomas W. Higginson, in _Eminent Women of the Age_,
mentions in this connection that, according to an established custom, on
the night before Thanksgiving "all the humble friends of the Francis
household--Marm Betty, the washerwoman, wood-sawyer, and journeymen, some
twenty or thirty in all--were summoned to a preliminary entertainment.
They there partook of an immense chicken pie, pumpkin pie made in milk-
pans, and heaps of doughnuts. They feasted in the large, old-fashioned
kitchen, and went awa