" THE LATCH-STRING IS OUT "
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,-4 have rather. missed in the correspondence about `'Latch-string" and "Latchkey" a reference to James Russell Lowell's fine lines, written under the threat of disruption by civil war. Inasmuch as they have also been forgotten or perhaps never read by some of my American friends, I venture to send the lines with a part of the context : " 0 strange New World, thot yit west never young, Whose youth from thee by gripin' need west wrung,
Brown o' the woods, whose baby-bed . Was prowled roun' by the Injuns' cracklin' tread, * * * * Thou, taught by Fate to know Jehovah's plan, That man's devices can't unmake a man, An' whose free latch-string never was drawed in Against the poorest child of Adam's kin,— The grave's not dug where traitor hands shall lay In fearful haste thy murdered corse away f "
am, Sir, &c.,
Previous page
