Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/269

 here perfectly to regain my strength before I betake myself to the South. Here I have the peace of freedom which I desire, and my friends' mode of living is altogether simple and healthful; and they themselves, and the children, and Rose Cottage, with its peaceful spirit—yes, with many such homes, the New World would be also the Better World!

It is, however, very cold still, and I long for the South, and for a milder air. I am not very fond of the climate of Massachusetts. Yet I have to thank Massachusetts for some glorious spring-days during the winter, for its beautiful, deep blue, beaming sky, for its magnificent elms, in the long sweeping branches of which the oriole builds in full security its little nest which sways in the wind; I thank it for its rural homes, where the fear of God, and industry, family affections, and purity of life, have their home. Its educational system has my esteem, and many excellent people have my love. To the good city of Boston I give my blessing, and am glad to be leaving it—for the present, but hope to return, because I must again see my friends there, when the elm-trees are in leaf; above all my good doctor and the young Lowells. And we have agreed to meet next summer. We shall together visit Niagara, which Maria Lowell as yet has never seen. When she was last with me in Boston I saw upon the floor of my bed-room a flower which had fallen from her bonnet, a white rose with two little pale pink buds, and which had touched her light curls,—they lay upon the carpet like a remembrance of her, and I picked them up, and shall keep them always as a remembrance of that lovely young woman. I thank the land of the Pilgrims above all for its ideal, for its conception of a higher law in society, a law of God, which ought to be obeyed rather than human law; for its conception of a standard of morality higher than that which is current in the world, and which demands the highest purity of life