Doubtless you are right about the verses. I always accept an editor’s decision, without objecting, as I know the difficulties of the position. I will write when I can. For a month or two, I shall be specially busy, and possibly may not have time for “St. Nicholas,” for which it is a pleasure to write. Yours most truly, LUCY LARCOM. TO THE SAME. BEVERLY FARMS, December 30, 1874. MY DEAR MRS. DODGE,--Your charming “Rhymes and Jingles” followed your pleasant note, and I thank you for both. The book is just what children most enjoy, as a real mother’s book will be sure to be; and you have some sweet little poems which seem to hide themselves too modestly among the merry rhymes. I think I have the mother-feeling,--ideally, at least; a woman is not a woman quite, who lacks it, be she married or single. The children--God bless them!--belong to the mother-heart that beats in all true women. They seem even dearer, sometimes, because I have none of my own to love and be loved by, for there is a great emptiness that only child-love can fill. So God made us, and I thank Him for it. The world’s unmothered ones would be worse off if it were not so. Thank you for writing of yourself, and your boys. I wish I knew you, face to face. I am sure we should find ourselves in sympathy in many ways. I send a verse or two, for by and by, when the March winds blow. When I get to a little clearing of leisure, I will write more for “St. Nicholas.” Truly your friend, LUCY LARCOM. TO MRS. J. T. FIELDS. BEVERLY FARMS, December 5, 1875. DEAR ANNIE,--I had a pleasant little visit at Mrs. Pitman’s after I left you. We went to Professor Thayer’s, in Cambridge, that evening, and heard Emerson’s noble paper on “Immortality,” which is soon to be published. There is great satisfaction in hearing such words from such a man’s own lips, for we know that Emerson has as little as mortal can have of the haze of vanity between himself and the truth; and it is this surely, oftener than anything else, that blinds men’s minds to the open secret of eternal life. Mr. Longfellow was there, and I had a pleasant talk with him. He spoke of the book he is preparing and told me he wanted to put into it “Hannah Binding Shoes.” Mr. Garrison and Henry Vincent, the lecturer, were at Mrs. P.’s the next day. I have been in Newburyport since I left Somerville, at my friend Mrs. Spalding’s. Mr. Whittier came there on his way from Boston, and I did not see that he was the worse for the woman-avalanche that descended upon him at your door....