Page:Some unpublished letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau; a chapter in the history of a still-born book.djvu/54

 who occasionally wrote me charming letters. Mrs. Thoreau, Henry's mother, was full of kind feeling for everybody, and had a generous, helpful spirit. She was most kind to all the children of her acquaintance, often devising entertainments for them; and I still have a vivid recollection of the boxes of home-made sweets she used to send to me when I was away at school."

Are you quite ready to believe that "gossip and malice" could find an abiding place in such a heart as this?

Now have we reached the letter written when Froude had burned his ships and was submitted to the slings and arrows of the "black dragoons" on whom John Sterling had also turned his back.