August, 1852
Dearest Mother:
The difference between Perry ——, of Worcester . . . and his
brother . . . Elijah is that Elijah not only is insane, but is thought
so. Perry is round and rosy; Elijah is tall, straight, with a fine face, and a
taste for walking the streets with his hat off, declaiming loudly. He has
travelled a great deal and can take excellent care of himself and property. His
last visit was to Rome to convert the Pope; he is himself a devout Catholic,
but has some peculiar views on penances and the like. Failing in this, he comes
to my meetings, where he gently reclines on a bench, as the Isles-of-Shoalers
used to do when the missionaries first went there. But everybody knows him and
takes it quietly. He has a gift at extemporaneous prayer which he indulges
freely from 10 to 11 P.m., his room being next to mine with a thin partition.
Perry —— talks faster than any man I ever met, but he
is quite shrewd and well informed, reads a good deal, and is the man who
pronounced Vergniaud Virginnyord. He says: “My wife's great-grandfolks wuz
the fust white folks that settled up Paxton way: and the Injins wuz gittin'
considerable sarcy before the war, and one day two on 'em came on old Elnathan
Dodge, two to wunst, right thru the door: wal, he just took and chucked
one on 'em eaout, right over the horse trough, and chucked the other after him,
right on eend, and they run, and that night Elnathan up duds and cleared” — which last is as vivid as veni,
vidi, vici. The children are named Eugene, La Roy Delavan, and Freewalder
Channing. Freewalder, he informed me, was a German hydropathic
establishment.
SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters
and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 83-4
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