83 WALTHAM STREET, BOSTON, January 1, 1878.
... Of course you must have grown very tired of the poetry written to you, and about you. I sent my verses to the “Transcript,” because I thought you seemed too much pleased to think I had spared you the infliction! Discipline can never come too late in life, I am confident!
Still, I didn’t say a word more than the truth, and I think I spoke sincerely for many others. It is a great thing to have won a nation’s affection,--much greater than the greatest amount of mere fame.
Judging from our own inside view, none of us deserve to be as well thought of by our friends as we are; but the beauty of it is, that real friendship knows us best after all, because it sees in us our best aim, endeavor, and possibilities, and lets our failures and imperfections pass by and be forgotten. Why not, when the judge is always so imperfect, too?
The sum of which is, that we all think you a pretty good sort of man, as men go.
I have been reading the Book of Romans through, trying to forget that I had ever read it before, and I find that “justification by faith” seems to me a very different doctrine from the one I was brought up on. I don’t know that I should understand it as Luther did. But it seems to me grander than I have dreamed of before. It is freedom to stand with our faces to the light, whatever our past may have been; freedom to do right from the love of it, and not as burdensome duty; and the love of doing right as the proof of deliverance. Is not this the “grace wherein ye stand,” which Paul preached as free grace in Christ?
I find very little in the Book of Romans which points to some _future_ salvation. It is the life redeemed from love of sin, which he seems to be talking to the Romans about. I do wish religion were made more practical in theology, after this Pauline fashion. I do not care for any commentator’s judgment. I think that common sense and a sincere desire for truth will be shown the right interpretation....
During part of the winter of 1878, Miss Larcom made her only foreign trip--a visit to Europe never being possible, on account of the expense--to Bermuda, which she thoroughly enjoyed. She wrote letters to the Boston “Daily Advertiser,” describing the “Still vexed Bermoothes,” with enthusiastic appreciation. The recollection of Miranda and Prospero, with “hag-born” Caliban, interested her as much as the houses with walls of coral, or the transparency of the beryl sea, through which one could see the sponges, and large purple amenones, and fish of brilliant hues. “A banana plantation is rather a shabby-looking affair; the leaves are beaten to tatters by the island tempests; but for a contrast there is the royal palm, to see which for the first time is an era in one’s life, lifting its stately column above the cocoanut and India rubber trees. And we are satisfied that roses smell no less sweet for growing on the border of an onion patch. After all this wonder of foreign growths it is pleasant to see a dandelion in flower, and to find little mats of pimpernel on the hillside before our hotel. These little home-blossoms deepen the home feeling, and we are no more foreigners, even here.”