Retrospect of Western Travel Volume Ii Part 10

Six young persons were taken at random from different parts of the State of Ma.s.sachusetts, and put under tuition. They were between the ages of six and twenty years. At the end of five months all these six could read correctly by the touch; had proceeded farther in arithmetic than seeing children usually do in the same time; knew more of geography; had made considerable attainment in music; and offered for sale moccasins and doormats of as good quality and appearance as any sold in the shops of Boston. The legislature testified its satisfaction by voting an annual appropriation of six thousand dollars to the inst.i.tution, on condition of its boarding and educating, free of cost, twenty poor blind persons from the State of Ma.s.sachusetts.

The public was no less delighted. Every one began to inquire what he could do. Money was given, objects were sought out; but some rallying-point for all the effort excited was wanted. This was soon supplied. A wealthy citizen of Boston, Colonel Perkins, offered his mansion and outbuildings in Pearl-street as a residence for the pupils, if, within a given time, funds were raised to support the establishment.

This act of munificence fully answered the purposes of the generous citizen who performed it. Within one month upward of fifty thousand dollars were contributed and placed to the credit of the inst.i.tution.

The legislatures of three other New-England states have made appropriations for the object; an estate joining Colonel Perkins's has been purchased and thrown into a playground; the establishment contains five officers and about fifty pupils, and it is in contemplation to increase the accommodations so as to admit more. The funds are ample, and the means of instruction of a very superior kind.

The business of the house is carried on by the pupils as far as possible, and mechanical arts are taught with care and diligence; but the rule of the establishment is to improve the mental resources of the pupils to the utmost. Those who cannot do better are enabled to earn their livelihood by the making of mats, baskets, and mattresses; but a higher destination is prepared for all who show ability to become organists of churches, and teachers of languages and science. I saw some of the pupils writing, some sewing, some practising music, some reading.

I was struck with an expression of sadness in many of their faces, and with a listlessness of manner in some; but I am aware that, owing to the illness of the director and some other circ.u.mstances, I saw the establishment to great disadvantage. I believe, however, that not a few of its best friends, among whom may perchance be included some of its managers themselves, would like to see more mirthful exercises and readings introduced in the place of some of the exclusively religious contemplations offered to the pupils. The best homage which the guardians of the blind could offer to Him whose blessing they invoke is in the thoroughly exercised minds of their charge; minds strong in power, gay in innocence, and joyous in grat.i.tude.

The inst.i.tution which I had the best means of observing, and which interested me more than any charitable establishment in America, was the Philadelphia Asylum for the Blind. It was humble in its arrangements and numbers when I first went, but before I left the country it seemed in a fair way to flourish. It is impossible to overrate the merits of Mr.

Friedlander, its princ.i.p.al, in regard to it. The difficulties with which he had to struggle, from confined s.p.a.ce, deficient apparatus, and other inconveniences resulting from narrow means, would have deterred almost any one else from undertaking anything till better aid could be provided. But he was cheered by the light which beamed out daily more brightly from the faces of his little flock of pupils, and supported by the intellectual power which they manifested from period to period of their course. Of the eleven he found, to his delight, that no fewer than "six were endowed with remarkable intellectual faculties, and three with good ones; while, with regard to the remaining two, the development of their minds might still be expected." A larger dwelling was next engaged; the legislature showed an interest in the inst.i.tution, and I have no doubt it is by this time flouris.h.i.+ng.

Mr. Friedlander and the matron, Miss Nicholls, had succeeded in rectifying the carriage and manners of nearly all their pupils. As to their studies, the aim is as high as in the New-England Inst.i.tution, and will, no doubt, be equally successful. The music was admirable, except for the p.r.o.nunciation of words in the singing. It was a great pleasure to me to go and hear their musical exercises, they formed so good a band of instrumentalists, and sang so well. There were horns, flutes, violins, and the piano. As for humbler matters, besides the ornamental works of the girls, the fringes, braids, lampstands, &c., I saw a frock made by one of them during the leisure hours of one week. The work was excellent, the gathers of the skirt being stocked into the waistband as evenly and regularly as by a common mantuamaker. The girls' hair was dressed like that of other young ladies, only scarcely a hair was out of its place; and each blind girl dresses her own hair. They peel potatoes with the utmost accuracy, and as quickly as others. But, with all this care, their cultivation of mind is most attended to. The girls stand as good an examination as the boys in mental arithmetic, geography, and reading aloud.

Before I left Philadelphia the annual meeting of the public in the Music Hall, to see the progress of Mr. Friedlander's pupils, took place. I was requested to write the address to be delivered by one of the blind in the name of the rest; and now I found what the difficulty is to an inexperienced person, of throwing one's self into the mind of a being in such different circ.u.mstances, and uttering only what he might say with truth. I now saw that the common run of hymns and other compositions put into the mouths of the blind become no less cant when uttered by them, than the generality of the so-called religious tracts which are written for the poor. The blind do not know what they miss in not receiving the light of the sun; and they would never spontaneously lament about it, nor would they naturally try to be submissive and resigned about privations which they are only by inference aware of. Their resignation should be about evils whose pressure they actually feel. To a blind child it is a greater pain to have a thorn in its foot than not to have eyes; to a blind man it is a greater sorrow not to have got his temper under control than to be shut out from the face of nature. The joy of the sightless should, in the same manner, be for the positive powers they hold and the achievements they grasp, and not for what others call compensations for what they do not miss. To bear all this in mind, and to conceive one's thoughts accordingly; to root out of the expression of thought every visual image, and subst.i.tute such, derived from other senses, as may arise naturally from the state of mind of the blind, is no easy task, as any one may find who tries. It led me into a speculation on the vast amount of empty words which the blind must swallow while seeking from books their intellectual food. We are all apt in reading to take in, as true and understood, a great deal more than we verify and comprehend; but, in the intercourses of the blind, what a tremendous proportion does the unreal bear to the real which is offered them!

I saw at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum at Boston one of those unhappy beings, the bare mention of whose case excites painful feelings of compa.s.sion. I was told that a young man who was deaf, dumb, and blind was on the premises, and he was brought to us. Impossible as it was to hold communication with him, we were all glad when, after standing and wandering awkwardly about, he turned from us and made his way out. He is not quite blind. He can distinguish light from darkness, but cannot be taught by any of the signs which are used with his deaf-mute companions.

His temper is violent, and there seems to be no way of increasing his enjoyments. His favourite occupation is piling wood, and we saw him doing this with some activity, mounted on the woodpile.

It is now feared that the cases of this tremendous degree of privation are not so few as has been hitherto supposed. In a Memorial of the Genoa Deaf and Dumb Inst.i.tution, it is stated that there are seven such cases in the Sardinian States on the mainland of Italy; and the probability is that about the same proportion as in other kinds of infirmity exists among other nations. Copious accounts have been given of three sufferers of this cla.s.s; and a fourth, Hannah Lamb, who was accidentally burned to death in London at the age of nine years, has been mentioned in print.

The three of whom we have been favoured with copious accounts are James Mitch.e.l.l, who is described to us by Dugald Stewart; Victoria Morisseau, at Paris, by M. Bebian; and Julia Brace, at Hartford (Connecticut), by Mrs. Sigourney. All these have given evidence of some degree of intellectual activity, and feeling of right and wrong; enough to const.i.tute a most affecting appeal to those who are too late to aid them, but who may possibly be the means of saving others from falling into their state. The obligation lies chiefly on the medical profession.

Every enlightened member of that profession laments that little is known about the diseases of the ear and their treatment. Whenever this organ, with its liabilities, becomes as well understood as that of sight, the number of deaf-mutes will doubtless be much reduced, and such cases as that of poor Julia Brace will probably disappear; at least the chances of the occurrence of such will be incalculably lessened.

The generosity of American society, already so active and extensive, will continue to be exerted in behalf of sufferers from the privation of the senses, till all who need it will be comprehended in its care. No one doubts that the charity will be done. The fear is lest the philosophy which should enlighten and guide the charity should be wanting. Such sufferers are apt to allure the observer, by means of his tenderest sympathies, into the imaginative regions of philosophy.

Science and generosity equally demand that the allurement should be resisted. If observers will put away all mere imaginations respecting their charge; if they will cease to approach them as superior beings in disguise, and look upon them as a peculiar cla.s.s of children more than ordinarily ignorant, and ignorant in a remarkable direction, facts may be learned relative to the formation of mind and the exercise of intellect which may give cause to the race of ordinary men to look upon their infirm brethren with grat.i.tude and love, as the medium through which new and great blessings have been conferred. By a union of inquirers and experimenters, by the speculative and practical cordially joining to work out the cases of human beings with four senses, the number might perhaps be speedily lessened of those who, seeing, see not, and who, hearing, hear not nor understand.

NAHANT.

"A breath of our free heaven and n.o.ble sires."

HEMANS.

The whole coast of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay is well worth the study of the traveller. Nothing can be more unlike than the aspect of the northern and southern extremities of the bay. Of Cape Ann, the northern point, with its bold sh.o.r.es and inexhaustible granite quarries, I have given some account in another book.[11] Not a ledge of rock is to be seen near Cape Cod, the southern extremity; but, instead of it, a sand so deep that travellers who have the choice of reaching it by horse or carriage prefer going over the last twenty miles on horseback; but then the sandhills are of so dazzling a whiteness as to distress the eyes. The inhabitants are a private race of fishermen and saltmen, dwelling in ground-floor houses, which are set down among the sand ridges without plan or order. Some communication is kept up between them and a yet more secluded race of citizens, the inhabitants of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, two islands which lie south of the southern peninsula of the bay. I much regretted that I had no opportunity of visiting these islands. Some stories that are abroad about the simplicity of the natives are enough to kindle the stranger's curiosity to see so fresh a specimen of human nature. In Nantucket there is not a tree, and scarcely a shrub. It is said that a fisherman's son, on accompanying his father for the first time to the mainland, saw a scrubby apple-tree. In great emotion, he cried, "Oh father! look there! what a beautiful tree! and what are those beautiful things on it? Are they lemons?" It was not my fortune to see any citizen of the United States who did not know an apple-tree at sight. It must be highly instructive to take a trip from this remarkable place across the bay to Nahant, in the month of August.

Footnote 11: Society in America, vol. i., page 281.

It was October when I visited Nahant, and all the gay birds of the summer had flown. I was not sorry for this, for fine people may be seen just as well in places where they are less in the way than on this rock.

Nahant is a promontory which stretches out into the bay a few miles north of Boston; or it might rather be called two islands, connected with each other and with the mainland by ridges of sand and pebbles. The outermost of the islands is the larger, and it measures rather above a mile and a half in circ.u.mference. The whole promontory was bought, in the seventeenth century, by a certain farmer Dexter, of an Indian chief, Black w.i.l.l.y, for a suit of clothes. Probably the one party was as far as the other from foreseeing what use the place would be put to in the coming days. Nahant is now the resort of the Boston gentry in the hot months. Several of them have cottages on the promontory; and for those who are brought by the indefatigable steamboat, there is a stupendous hotel, the proportion of which to the place it is built on is as a man-of-war would be riding in one of the lovely Ma.s.sachusetts ponds.

Some middle-aged gentlemen remember the time when there was only one house on Nahant; and now there are b.a.l.l.s in this hotel, where the extreme of dress and other luxury is seen, while the beach which connects the rock with the mainland is gay with hundreds of carriages and equestrians on bright summer mornings.

This beach consists of gray sand, beaten so hard by the action of the waves from the harbour on one side and the bay on the other, that the wheels of carriages make no impression, and the feet of horses resound as on the hardest road. It is the most delightful place for a drive or a gallop that can be imagined, except to the timorous, who may chance to find their horses frightened when the waves are boisterous on either hand at once. We entered upon it when the water was nearly at its height, and the pa.s.sage was narrow. We had pa.s.sed through the busy town of Lynn, and left its many hundreds of shoemaking families at their work behind us. We had pa.s.sed many a field where the shoemaker, turned farmer for the season, was manuring his land with fishheads and offal; and now we burst into a region where no sounds of labour were heard, few signs of vegetation seen. We were alone with our own voices and the das.h.i.+ng of the sea, which seemed likely to take us off our feet.

When we reached Great Nahant, several picturesque cottages of the gentry came into view. All had piazzas, and several were adorned with bright creeping plants. No inhabitants were visible. Some rows of miserable young trees looked as if they were set up in order to be blown down. Many attempts have been made to raise forest-trees, but hitherto in vain. Some large willows grow in a partially sheltered spot, and under these are the boarding-houses of the place. The verdure is scanty, of course, and this is not the kind of beauty to be looked for in Nahant. The charms of the place are in the distant views, and among the picturesque and intricate rocks.

The variety contained within the circuit of a mile and a half is fully known only to the summer residents; but we saw something of it. At one moment we were prying into the recesses of the Swallows' Cave, listening to the rumbling of the waves within it, making discoveries of birds'

nests, and looking up through its dark chasms to the sky. At the next we caught a view, between two rising grounds, of Boston, East Boston, and Chelsea, sitting afar off upon the sunny waters. Here and there was a quiet strip of beach, where we sat watching the rich crop of weed swayed to and fro by the spreading and retreating of the translucent waters; and then at intervals we came to where the waves boil among the caverns, making a busy roar in the stillest hour of the stillest day. Here all was so chill and shadowy that the open sea, with its sunny sail and canopy of pearly clouds, looked as if it were quite another region, brought into view by some magic, but really lying on the other side of the world.

There is a luxurious bathing-place for ladies, a little beach so shut in by rocks, along the top of which runs a high fence, that the retirement is complete. Near it is the Spouting Horn, where we sat an unmeasured time, watching the rising tide spouting more magnificently every moment from the recess called The Horn. Every wave rushed in and splashed out again with a roar, the fragments of seaweed flying off like shot. A clever little boy belonging to our party was meantime abroad among the boarding-houses, managing to get us a dinner. He saved us all the trouble, and came to summon us, and show us the way. His father could not have managed better than he did.

We rambled about in the afternoon till we could no longer conceal from ourselves that the sun was getting low. We intended to describe a circuit in returning, so as to make as much of our road as possible lie along the beach. Never was the world bathed in a lovelier atmosphere than this evening. The rocks, particularly the island called Egg Rock, were of that soft lilach hue which harmonizes with the green sea on sunny evenings. While this light was brightest, we suddenly came upon a busy and remarkable scene--the hamlet of Swampscot, on the beach--the place where novel-readers go to look for Mucklebacket's cottage, so much does it resemble the beach scenes in the Antiquary. Boats were drawn up on the sh.o.r.e, the smallest boats, really for use, that I ever saw. They are flatbottomed, and are tenanted by one man, or, at most, two, when going out for cod. The men are much cramped in these tiny boats, and need exercise when they come to sh.o.r.e, and we saw a company playing at quoits at the close of their working-day. Many children were at play, their little figures seen in black relief against the sea, or trailing long shadows over the washed and glistening sands. Women were coming homeward with their milkpans or taking in their linen from the lines.

All were busy, and all looked joyous. While my companions were bargaining for fish I had time to watch the singular scene; and when it was necessary to be gone, and we turned up into the darkening lanes away from the sea, we looked back to the last moment upon this busy reach of the bright sh.o.r.e.

The scenery of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay is a treasure which Boston possesses over and above what is enjoyed by her sister cities of the East.

New-York has a host of beauties about her, it is true; the North River, Hoboken, and Staten Island; but there is something in the singularity of Nahant and the wild beauty of Cape Ann more captivating than the crowded, fully-appropriated beauties round New-York. Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Was.h.i.+ngton have no environs which can compare with either of the Northern cities. The islands which lie off Charleston, and where the less opulent citizens repair for health in the hot months, are praised more for their freshness and fertility than for any romantic beauty; and the coasts of the South are flat and shoaly. The South has the advantage in the winter, when none but the hardiest fishermen can be abroad to watch the march of the wintry storms over the Northern sea and sky; but in summer and autumn, when the Southerners who cannot afford to travel are panting and sickening in the glare among sands and swamps, the poorest of the citizens of Ma.s.sachusetts may refresh himself amid the seabreezes on the bright promontories or cool caverns of his native sh.o.r.e.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES IN Ma.s.sACHUSETTS.

"II ne faut pas une bien grande force d'esprit pour comprendre que ni les richesses ni le pouvoir ne rendent heureux. a.s.sez de gens sentent cette verite. Mais de ceux qui la connoissent pleinement et se conduisent en consequence, le nombre en est si pet.i.t qu'il semble que ce soit la l'effort le plus rare de la raison humaine."

--PAUL LOUIS COURIER.

Some few years hence it will be difficult to believe what the state of the times was in some parts of the United States, and even in the maritime cities, in 1835. The system of terrorism seems now to be over.

It did not answer its purpose, and is dropped; but in 1835 it was new and dreadful. One of the most hideous features of the times was the ignorance and unconcern of a large portion of society about what was being done and suffered by other divisions of its members. I suppose, while Luther was toiling and thundering, German ladies and gentlemen were supping and dancing as usual; and while the Lollards were burning, perhaps little was known or cared about it in warehouses and upon farms.

So it was in America. The gentry with whom I chiefly a.s.sociated in New-York knew little of the troubles of the abolitionists in that city, and nothing about the state of the anti-slavery question in their own region. In Boston I heard very striking facts which had taken place in broad daylight vehemently and honestly denied by many who happened to be ignorant of what had been done in their very streets. Not a few persons applied to me, a stranger, for information about the grand revolution of the time which was being transacted, not only on their own soil, but in the very city of their residence. A brief sketch of what I saw and experienced in Boston during the autumn of 1835 will afford some little information as to what the state of society actually was.

At the end of August a grand meeting was held at Faneuil Hall in Boston.

The hall was completely filled with the gentry of the city, and some of the leading citizens took the responsibility and conducted the proceedings of the day. The object of the meeting was to sooth the South, by directing public indignation upon the abolitionists. The pretext of the a.s.sembly was, that the Union was in danger; and though the preamble to the resolutions declared disapprobation of the inst.i.tution of slavery, the resolutions themselves were all inspired by fear of or sympathy with slaveholders. They reprobated all agitation of the question, and held out a.s.surances to the South that every consideration should be made subordinate to the grand one of preserving the Union. The speeches were a disgrace to the const.i.tuents of a democratic republic, pointed as they were against those rights of free discussion and a.s.sociation at the time acted upon by fellow-citizens, and imbued with deference for the South. In the crowded a.s.sembly no voice was raised in disapprobation except when a speaker pointed to the portrait of Was.h.i.+ngton as "that slaveholder;" and even then the murmur soon died into silence. The gentlemen went home, trusting that they had put down the abolitionists and conciliated the South. In how short a time did the new legislature of the State pa.s.s, in that very city, a series of thorough-going abolition resolutions, sixteen const.i.tuting the minority! while the South had already been long despising the half-and-half doctrine of the Faneuil Hall meeting!

Meantime, the immediate result of the proceeding was the mob of which I have elsewhere given an account.[12] After that mob the regular meetings of the abolitionists were suspended for want of a place to meet in.

Incessant attempts were made to hire any kind of public building, but no one would take the risk of having his property destroyed by letting it to so obnoxious a set of people. For six weeks exertions were made in vain. At last a Boston merchant, who had built a pleasant house for himself and his family, said, that while he had a roof over his head, his neighbours should not want a place in which to hold a legal meeting for honest objects; and he sent an offer of his house to the ladies of the Anti-slavery Society. They appointed their meeting for three o'clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, November 18. They were obliged to make known their intentions as they best could, for no newspaper would admit their advertis.e.m.e.nts, and the clergy rarely ventured to give out their notices, among others, from the pulpit.

Footnote 12: Society in America, vol. i., p. 169-176.

I was at this time slightly acquainted with three or four abolitionists, and I was distrusted by most or all of the body who took any interest in me at all. My feelings were very different from theirs about the slaveholders of the South; naturally enough, as these Southern slaveholders were nothing else in the eyes of abolitionists, while to me they were, in some cases, personal friends, and, in more, hospitable entertainers. It was known, however, that I had declared my intention of attending an abolition meeting. This was no new resolution. From the outset of my inquiry into the question, I had declared that, having attended colonization meetings, and heard all that the slaveholders had to say for themselves and against abolitionists, I felt myself bound to listen to the other side of the question. I always professed my intention of seeking acquaintance with the abolitionists, though I then fully and involuntarily believed two or three charges against them which I found to be wholly groundless. The time was now come for discharging this duty.

On the Monday, two friends, then only new acquaintances, called on me at the house of a clergyman where I was staying, three miles from Boston. A late riot at Salem was talked over, a riot in which the family of Mr.

Thompson had been driven from one house to another three times in one night, the children being s.n.a.t.c.hed from their beds, carried abroad in the cold, and injuriously terrified. It was mentioned that the ladies of the Anti-slavery Society were going to attempt a meeting on the next Wednesday, and I was asked whether I was in earnest in saying that I would attend one of their meetings. Would I go to this one if I should be invited? I replied that it depended entirely on the nature of the meeting. If it was merely a meeting for the settlement of accounts and the despatch of business, where I should not learn what I wanted, I should wait for a less perilous time; if it was a _bona fide_ public meeting, a true reflection of the spirit and circ.u.mstances of the time and the cause, I would go. The matter was presently decided by the arrival of a regular official invitation to me to attend the meeting, and to carry with me the friend who was my travelling companion, and any one else who might be disposed to accompany me.

Trifling as these circ.u.mstances may now appear, they were no trifles at the time; and many considerations were involved in the smallest movement a stranger made on the question. The two first things I had to take care of were to avoid involving my host in any trouble I might get into, and to afford opportunity to my companion to judge for herself what she would do. My host had been reviled in the newspapers already for having read a notice (among several others) of an anti-slavery meeting from Dr.

Channing's pulpit, where he was accidentally preaching. My object was to prevent his giving an opinion on anything that I should do, that he might not be made more or less responsible for my proceedings. I handed the invitation to my companion, with a hint not to speak of it. We separately made up our minds to go, and announced our determination to our host and hostess. Between joke and earnest, they told us we should be mobbed; and the same thing was repeated by many who were not in joke at all.

At two o'clock on the Wednesday we arrived at the house of a gentleman where we were to meet a few of the leading abolitionists, and dine, previous to the meeting. Our host was miserably ill that day, unfit to be out of his chamber; but he exerted himself to the utmost, being resolved to escort his wife to the meeting. During dinner, the conversation was all about the Southern gentry, in whose favour I said all I could, and much more than the party could readily receive; which was natural enough, considering that they and I looked at the people of the South from different points of view. Before we issued forth on our expedition I was warned once more that exertions had been made to get up a mob, and that it was possible we might be dispersed by violence. When we turned into the street where the house of meeting stood, there were about a dozen boys hooting before the door, as they saw ladies of colour entering. We were admitted without having to wait an instant on the steps, and the door was secured behind us.

The ladies a.s.sembled in two drawing-rooms, thrown into one by the folding-doors being opened. The total number was a hundred and thirty.

The president sat at a small table by the folding-doors, and before her was a large Bible, paper, pens, and ink, and the secretary's papers.

There were only three gentlemen in the house, its inhabitant, the gentleman who escorted us, and a clergyman who had dined with us. They remained in the hall, keeping the front door fastened, and the back way clear for our retreat, if retreat should be necessary. But the number of hooters in the streets at no time exceeded thirty, and they treated us to nothing worse than a few yells.

A lady who sat next me amused me by inquiring, with kindness, whether it revolted my feelings to meet thus in a.s.sembly with people of colour. She was as much surprised as pleased with my English deficiency of all feeling on the subject. My next neighbour on the other hand was Mrs.

Thompson, the wife of the anti-slavery lecturer, who had just effected his escape, and was then on the sea. The proceedings began with the reading of a few texts of Scripture by the president. My first impression was that the selection of these texts gave out a little vainglory about the endurance of persecution; but when I remembered that this was the reunion of persons who had been dispersed by a mob, and when I afterward became aware how cruelly many of the members had been wounded in their moral sense, their domestic affections, and their prospects in life, I was quite ready to yield my too nice criticism. A prayer then followed, the spirit of which appeared to me perfect in hopefulness, meekness, and gentleness. While the secretary was afterward reading her report, a note was handed to me, the contents of which sunk my spirits fathom deep for the hour. It was a short pencil note from one of the gentlemen in the hall; and it asked me whether I had any objection to give a word of sympathy to the meeting, fellow-labourers as we had long been in behalf of the principles in whose defence they were met. The case was clear as daylight to my conscience. If I had been a mere stranger, attending with a mere stranger's interest to the proceedings of a party of natives, I might and ought to have declined mixing myself up with their proceedings. But I had long before published against slavery, and always declared my conviction that this was a question of humanity, not of country or race; a moral, not a merely political question; a general affair, and not one of city, state, party, or nation. Having thus declared on the safe side of the Atlantic, I was bound to act up to my declaration on the unsafe side, if called upon. I thought it a pity that the call had been made, though I am now very glad that it was, as it was the means of teaching me more of the temper and affairs of the times than I could have known by any other means, and as it ripened the regard which subsisted between myself and the writer of the note into a substantial, profitable, and delightful friends.h.i.+p; but, at the moment, I foresaw none of these good consequences, but a formidable array of very unpleasant ones. I foresaw that almost every house in Boston, except those of the abolitionists, would be shut against me; that my relation to the country would be completely changed, as I should be suddenly transformed from being a guest and an observer to being considered a missionary or a spy; and results even more serious than this might reasonably be antic.i.p.ated. During the few minutes I had for consideration, the wife of the writer of the note came to me, and asked what I thought of it, begging me to feel quite at liberty to attend to it or not, as I liked. I felt that I had no such liberty. I was presently introduced to the meeting, when I offered the note as my reason for breaking the silence of a stranger, and made the same declarations of my abhorrence of slavery and my agreement in the principles of the abolitionists which I had expressed throughout the whole of my travels through the South.