To Miss Sara Sedgwick.

[1874.]

It will give me great pleasure to join in the delight the children will have in Mr. Trowbridge’s honest and natural magic. The choice of time seems happy, and' refers, I presume, to the religious instruction of the children; for the science of electricity is, you know, an explosion of the “theological theory of thunder.” If time remains after the exhibition, why shouldn’t we have the reading of a Greek tragedy by way of corrective and relief? “Œdipus at Colonos,” in which the hero is warned by Zeus, in peals of thunder, of his approaching exit to Hades, would be an appropriate choice. We might thus restore to poetry what is taken from dogma.