Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

[177] heart. God comfort you! He alone can carry you through this dark passage. He has given you beautiful little grandchildren to love, and I trust their soft arms will help to bear you up. Most sincerely do I wish that my old life could have been sacrificed to save your brave and beautiful boy. But the Heavenly Father ordereth all things in wisdom and in mercy, too; as we should acknowledge if we could only see the end from the beginning.

In your last but one you wrote as if I might think you did not pity me enough. I was going to answer that you pitied me more than enough; more than I pity myself. I was going to ask you what was my misfortune ¹ compared with that of the poor wretches driven from their homes by murderous mobs; or what was it compared with the anxiety of a mother whose only son was leading a colored regiment into South Carolina. But now in view of this terrible rumor, how utterly insignificant and contemptible seem all my troubles! I thank Mrs. Gay very much for her hearty sympathy; but tell her that at a crisis like this it is merely as if a mosquito had stung me.

Ought I not to be taking care of the sick and wounded soldiers? Sometimes that thought worries me. Yours with a heart brimful of love and sympathy.