CHAPTER X.
UNDERCURRENTS.
1884-1889.
TO MISS S. H. WARD.
January 1, 1884.
Dear Susie Ward,—Something has just brought you to mind; I saw your address in print in an almanac, and I felt like sending a New Year’s greeting to the schoolgirl I knew—was it thirty years ago?
I am very fond of those dear girls of mine, though I seldom see them, and would like to send a New Year’s greeting to them all.
Ever your friend,
Lucy Larcom.
TO THE SAME.
Beverly, Mass., January 15, 1884.
My dear Susie,—It is so pleasant to take up the threads of an old friendship again! It always reassures me of the hereafter of souls, that even here after long intervals, we find ourselves still at home with those who had slipped away from us apparently. They are really still in their place, and we are sure of them and know where to find them.
I have had many changes since we were much together, but life is the same good gift of the Lord I always knew it to be, only more wonderful as one gets deeper into it.
Always yours,
Lucy Larcom.
TO J. G. WHITTIER.
Wolfville, Nova Scotia,
August 21, 1884.My dear Friend,—I am moved to write to you from here, where I sit looking out upon the Basin of Minas, and Grand Pré itself, the mud of which latter I have been trying to remove from my dress, though I suppose I ought to let it stay spattered with poetic associations!
Yesterday we were taken to drive through the Valley of the Gaspereau, a lovely region, under perfect cultivation,—and so on, over the old dikes of Grand Pré, where we stood upon the site of the old church, and saw the cellar of what was supposed to be the priest’s house, close by the church.
The people here think they know where Evangeline’s father lived, and just where Basil the blacksmith had his forge,—so mixed are our illusions with our historic certainties! I find myself believing in Evangeline as a real maiden, one who once lived and suffered on this very soil, and I gathered a daisy and a wild rose for you, which her hand might have plucked, instead of mine, as a memorial of her lost home.
Miss J—— and I are stopping at the village doctor’s. Mrs. Fitch, who keeps his house, takes a very few boarders. His orchard is loaded with apples and pears, and his garden opens out on the meadow close upon the first dike built by the French Acadians. We are finding the hottest weather of the season, and are glad not to be in any city just now.
We had a pleasant sail to Halifax—the sea as smooth as glass, and so no excuse for sickness. I had friends in Halifax, who took us to the citadel and the park, the latter the finest I ever saw, because left chiefly to nature: just woods of pine and spruce, overlooking the harbor, which I can well believe to be what the Nova Scotians claim for it—the most beautiful harbor in the world.
We go the last of the week to Annapolis and Digby, and home by the way of Mt. Desert, which I have never visited.
I go from there to Bethel, to spend September,—read my proof—and escape hay-fever—(as I hope!).
You are often spoken of here, and by those who wish you would visit the place. The journey is a long one, and I suppose, as I tell them, that you would not feel like taking it. But there is a charm about the people and the region which can only be felt by being here,—everybody seems very intelligent, and very hospitable,—no extreme poverty anywhere, that I can see.
Thine always,
Lucy Larcom.
TO PHILLIPS BROOKS.
12 Concord Square, March 26, 1885.
Dear Mr. Brooks,—I called at the chapel yesterday afternoon, but others were waiting to see you, and it was getting late in the day, so I did not stay. I had, indeed, no good excuse for taking your time; but it would have been a great pleasure to speak to you, after my winter’s imprisonment with illness.
It is only within a week or two that I have come to Boston, or been out to church at all. I have enjoyed, almost to pain, the few services I have attended, for I am not sure that I hold myself in the right manner towards God’s people, with whom I so fully sympathize in spirit. I wonder if I really am in the Church! My childish consecration was sincere; I entered the communion of the sect in which I was baptized and brought up, from an earnest longing to come nearer to Christ,—a desire which has grown with me through all the years; only now it reaches out beyond all names and groupings, towards the whole Communion of Saints in Him. Nothing less than this is the real Church to me. Some narrowness I find in every denomination, and this distresses and repels me, so that I cannot tell where I belong. Yet when I go to Trinity Church, I feel myself taken possession of, borne upward on the tide of loving loyalty to Christ; and I know that it has not been well for me to live apart from my kindred.
I wish I could find myself among the group who consecrate themselves to-night: but, as you once said to me, if that were the way for me, it would be made plain. And I shall consider Trinity as home, whenever I am in Boston.
I did have one little request to make,—it was liberty to use some paragraphs from your printed sermons in a compilation which I may prepare this year. I shall take it that I have permission, unless forbidden.
Faithfully yours,
Lucy Larcom.
TO ——
December 3, 1885.
I heard Canon Farrar preach and lecture. He is not remarkable, it seems to me, except for his moral and spiritual earnestness, but that is remarkable, as men go. I liked his lecture, for it will help to foster a good feeling between us two brother nations of the English race. England and America ought to feel themselves one....
When the summer came, Miss Larcom always looked forward with pleasure to her mountain-homes, of which she had a number, in New Hampshire and Maine. The hills gave her rest; and the beauty of the views, with the grand distances, suggesting freedom and the thought of being above the common level, gave her inspiration for her work. Each year she tried to visit the various points she loved—Ossipee Park, The Notch, Bethlehem, Moosilauke, Bethel, Centre Harbor, and Berlin Falls. Bethel fascinated her with its sight of the Androscoggin and its majestic elms, and the view of Mt. Moriah and some of the Presidential Range,—Madison, Adams, and Washington. At Mr. John Russell’s Riverside Cottage she was always welcome; and back of the house, on the crest of the mountain, was a little glen, shaded by evergreens, in which she used to sit and read, called “Miss Larcom’s Retreat.” Sitting on the low bench, in this nook, she wrote the poem “On the Ledge:”—
“Here is shelter and outlook, deep rest and wide room;
The pine woods behind, breathing balm out of gloom;
Before, the great hills over vast levels lean,—
A glory of purple, a splendor of green.