Hal,

Here is the source in context:


The most useful and interesting letters we get here from home are from
children seven or eight years old. This is petrified truth. Happily they
have got nothing to talk about but home, and neighbours and family--things
their betters think unworthy of transmission thousands of miles. They write
simply and naturally, and without straining for effect. They tell all they
know, and then stop.
- "An Open Letter to the American People" _New York Weekly Review_, 17
February 1866


Barb