Saturday I spent at Amesbury; it was not quite like other visits, for two other visitors were there; yet I enjoyed one of them especially; an educated mulatto girl, refined, lady-like in every respect, and a standing reply to those who talk of the “inferiority of the colored race.” It is seldom that I see any one who attracts me so much, whose acquaintance I so much desire, just from first sight. She would like to teach at Port Royal, but the _government_ will not permit. Ah, well! my book ends with no prospect of the war’s end. Three hundred thousand recruits have just been raised, and as many more are to be drafted.
Many talk as if there never was a darker time than now. We have no unity of purpose; the watchword is “Fight for the Government!” but that is an abstraction the many cannot comprehend. If they would say, “Fight for Liberty--your own liberty, and that of every American,” there would be an impetus given to the contest that, on our side, “drags its slow length along.” This is an extreme opinion, our law-abiding people say, but I believe we shall come to worse extremes before the war ends.
The regular routine of school-life was varied for Miss Larcom by charming invitations to Boston where she met many literary friends, and by her pleasant summer vacations, which she always spent among the mountains. The two following letters, one to Mr. James T. Fields and one to Mr. Whittier, are interesting:--
DEAR MR. FIELDS,--My thoughts ran into a kind of rhapsody, all to themselves, after that evening of pleasant surprises at your house. I did not know it was fairy-land at 37 Charles Street, nor did I dream of meeting so many of the Genii,--if I had foredreamed or foreknown, I suppose I should have thought it even more of an impossibility for me to go than I did.
I wasn’t going to be so foolish as to send you this rhapsody, but I have just got back to my own room after the wanderings of vacation, and have hung up my ruined arch. It is Dolabella’s, on the Coelian Hill, and it brings back so many pleasant reminiscences of those few hours among the treasures of your home-grotto that I am just in the mood for inflicting this out-of-date expression of my enjoyment upon Mrs. Fields and you. I don’t pretend that it is poetry, and if you are ashamed of me, for running on so, please remember that you shouldn’t have shown me so many curious and beautiful things;--I am not used to them.