Our friendship began when we were little girls in “pantalets,” when we were “doffers” together in the cotton-mill, and was continued to the end of her life. She also became my husband’s friend; and during his lifetime she was our frequent guest, and was always “Aunt Lucy” to our children. Mr. Robinson had great faith in her possibilities as a writer, and he published her verses in his newspaper long before they found admittance into the magazines. It was through him, while he was the reader (or “stopper”) for _The Atlantic Monthly_, during Mr. Lowell’s editorship, that “The Rose Enthroned” was brought to the notice of the poet, and afterwards admitted into the pages of the magazine. In a letter to Mr. Robinson, Miss Larcom says of this poem: “‘The Rose Enthroned’ was written in 1860, and published in June, 1861, through your mediation, you know.” I should be glad to quote freely from her letters, they are so full of friendship and of loving kindness, but must refrain, and give extracts from those only which relate to her personal history. In a letter written to me at Concord, Mass., in 1857, she says:-- “I was very glad to hear from you, and was particularly interested in your account of the sewing-society [anti-slavery] at R. W. E----’s. Didn’t it seem funny to go a-gossiping to the house of the Seer? I don’t wonder at your expecting the parrot to talk ‘transcendentally.’ Did the tea and toast smack of Hymettus? and was there any apple-_sass_ from those veritable sops-o’-wine? Attic salt came in as a matter of course. Well, it’s a fine thing to be on visiting terms at Olympus. I should like to see the philosopher again. I don’t think I should be afraid of him now.... Sometimes I like philosophers, and sometimes I don’t. The thing is to _live_. Beautiful theories don’t make any of us do that, but the real breath of life from the Infinite Good, which every soul must have for itself, or, fool or philosopher, he is dead as a heap of sand.... I should like to see the hills where huckleberries grow, and the Pond. There never were hills so still and balmy as those.”... During the war her letters breathe the spirit of “A Loyal Woman’s No!” and show, to one that can read between the lines, that she had a personal interest in saying _No_ to a lover who seemed to her to be disloyal to his country. Although a strong abolitionist, and a believer in the political rights of man, regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” she did not see the justice of woman’s claim to equal rights with man. In answer to a letter asking for her help in the suffrage cause, written in 1870, she says:--