Letters of Lydia Maria Child With a Biographical Introduction and Appendix

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882. Excerpt: ... INTRODUCTION. Lsr 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 Shakespeare'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, Ci 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 cliewer 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 Mends of the Francis household--Marra Betty, the washerwoman, wood-sawyer, and journeymen, some twenty or thirty in all--were summoned to a preliminary entertainmen...