To Mrs. David Lane.
SHEFFIELD, Sept. 3, 1864.
DEAR FRIEND,--. . . Mrs. __ reported you very much occupied with
documents, papers, letters, and what not, on matters connected with
the Sanitary. I should like to have you recognize that there are other
people who need to be healed and helped besides soldiers; and that
there are other interests beside public ones to be looked after. Are
not all interests individual interests in [274] the "last analysis,"
as the philosophers say? But I am afraid you don't believe in analysis
at all. Generality, combination, is everything with you. One part of
the human race is rolled up into a great bundle of sickness, wounds,
and misery; and the other is nothing but a benevolent blanket to be
wrapped round it. And if any one thread--videlicet I--should claim to
have any separate existence or any little tender feeling by itself,
immediately the manager of the Great Sanitary Fair says, "Hush! lie
down! you are nothing but a part of the blanket." But a truce to
nonsense. Since writing the foregoing, the news has come from Atlanta.
Oh! if Grant could do the same thing to Lee's army, not only would the
Rebellion be broken, but the Copperhead party would be scattered to the
winds! Do you read anything this summer but reports from Borrioboola
Gha? The best book I have read--Ticknor's "Prescott," Alger's "Future
Life," Furness's "Veil Partly Lifted," etc., notwithstanding--is De
Tocqueville's "Ancient Regime and the Revolution."
Your old friend,