Emerson could _insulate_ himself here and keep his electricity.
Hawthorne ought to have lived in an orange grove in Florida.... You
have no idea how small you all look, you folks in the world, from this
distance. All your fusses and your fumings, your red-hot hurrying
newspapers, your clamor of rival magazines,--why, we see it as we see
steamboats fifteen miles off, a mere speck and smoke."
Again she writes: "You ought to see us riding out in our mule-cart.
Poor 'Fly!' the last of pea-time, who looks like an animated hair-
trunk and the wagon and harness to match! It is too funny, but we
enjoy it hugely. There are now in our solitude five Northern families,
and we manage to have quite pleasant society.
"But think of our church and school-house being burned down just as we
were ready to do something with it. I feel it most for the colored
people, who were so anxious to have their school and now have no place
to have it in. We have all been trying to raise what we can for a new
building and intend to get one up by March.
"If I were North now I would try giving some readings for this and
perhaps raise something."
It was a strange contrast and one at variance with her natural taste,
which brought her before the public as a reader of her own stories in
the autumn and winter of 1872-73. She was no longer able to venture on
the effort of a long story, and yet it was manifestly unwise for her
to forego the income which was extended to her through this channel.
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