Chapter XLIII: Part 43

Being for many years an inspector of the public prisons, his practical sagacity and benevolence were used with marked results. His enlarged sympathies had always embraced the criminal and the imprisoned, as well as the oppressed; and the last years of his life were especially devoted to the improvement of prisons and prisoners. In this department of benevolence he manifested the same zealous kindness and untiring diligence that had so long been exerted for the colored people, for whose welfare he labored to the end of his days.

He possessed a wonderful wisdom in furnishing relief to all who were in difficulty and embarrassment. This caused a very extensive demand upon his time and talents, which were rarely withheld when honestly sought, and seldom applied in vain.

Mrs. Kirkland prepared, under the title of "The Helping Hand," a small volume, for the benefit of "The Home" for discharged female convicts, containing a brief description of the institution, and a detail of facts illustrating the happy results of its operation. Its closing chapter is appropriately devoted to the following well-deserved tribute to the veteran philanthropist, to whose zeal and discretion that and so many other similar institutions owe their existence, or to a large degree their prosperity.

"Not to inform the public what it knows very well already, nor
to forestall the volume now preparing by Mrs. Child, a kindred
spirit, but to gratify my own feelings, and to give grace and
sanctity to this little book, I wish to say a few words of Mr.
Hopper, the devoted friend of the prisoner as of the slave; one
whose long life, and whose last thoughts, were given to the care
and succor of human weakness, error, and suffering. To make even
the most unpretending book for the benefit of 'The Home,'
without bringing forward the name of Isaac T. Hopper, and
recognizing the part he took in its affairs, from the earliest
moment of its existence until the close of his life, would be an
unpardonable omission. A few words must be said where a volume
would scarcely suffice.

"'The rich and the poor meet together, and the Lord is the
Father of them all,' might stand for the motto of Mr. Hopper's
life. That the most remote of these two classes stood on the
same level of benevolent interest in his mind, his whole career
made obvious; he was the last man to represent as naturally
opposite those whom God has always, even to the end of the
world, made mutually dependent. He told the simple truth to each
with equal frankness; helped both with equal readiness. The
palace owed him no more than the hovel suggested thoughts of
superiority. Nothing human, however grand, or however degraded,
was a stranger to him. In the light that came to him from
heaven, all stood alike children of the Great Father; earthly
distinction disappearing the moment the sinking soul or the
suffering body was in question. No amount of depravity could
extinguish his hope of reform; no recurrence of ingratitude
could paralyze his efforts. Early and late, supported or
unsupported, praised or ridiculed, he went forward in the great
work of relief, looking neither to the right hand, nor to the
left; and when the object was accomplished, he shrank back into
modest obscurity, only to wait till a new necessity called for
his reappearance. Who can number the poor, aching, conscious,
despairing hearts that have felt new life come to them from his
kind words, his benignant smile, his helping hand. If the record
of his long life could be fully written, which it can never be,
since every day and all day, in company, in the family circle,
with children, with prisoners, with the insane, 'virtue went out
of him' that no human observation could measure or describe,
what touching interest would be added to the history of our poor
and vicious population for more than half a century past; what
new honor and blessing would surround the venerated name of our
departed friend and leader!

"But he desired nothing of this. Without claiming for him a
position above humanity, which alone would account for a
willingness to be wholly unrecognized as a friend of the
afflicted, it is not too much to say that no man was ever less
desirous of public praise or outward honor. He was even
unwilling that any care should be taken to preserve the
remembrance of his features, sweet and beautiful as they were,
though he was brought reluctantly to yield to the anxious wish
of his children and friends that the countenance on which every
eye loved to dwell, should not be wholly lost when the grave
should close above it. He loved to talk of interesting cases of
reform and recovery, both because those things occupied his
mind, and because every one loved to hear him; but the hearer
who made these disclosures the occasion for unmeaning
compliment, as if he fancied a craving vanity to have prompted
them, soon found himself rebuked by the straightforward and
plain-spoken patriarch. Precious indeed were those seasons of
outpouring, when one interesting recital suggested another, till
the listener seemed to see the whole mystery of prison-life and
obscure wretchedness laid open before him with the distinctness
of a picture. For, strange as it may seem, our friend had under
his plain garb--unchanged in form since the days of Franklin, to
go no further back--a fine dramatic talent, and could not relate
the humblest incident without giving it a picturesque or
dramatic turn, speaking now for one character, now for another,
with a variety and discrimination very remarkable. This made his
company greatly sought, and as his strongly social nature
readily responded, his acquaintance was very large. To every one
that knew him personally, I can appeal for the truth and
moderation of these views of his character and manners.

"A few biographical items will close what I venture to offer
here.

"Isaac T. Hopper was born December 3, 1771, in the township of
Deptford, Gloucester county, New Jersey, but spent a large
portion of his life in Philadelphia, where he served his
apprenticeship to the humble calling of a tailor. But neither
the necessity for constant occupation nor the temptations of
youthful gaiety, prevented his commencing, even then, the
devotion of a portion of his time, to the care of the poor and
needy. He had scarcely reached man's estate when we find him an
active member of a benevolent association, and his volume, of
notes of cases, plans and efforts, date back to that early
period. To that time also, we are to refer the beginning of his
warm Anti-slavery sentiment, a feeling so prominent and
effective throughout his life, and the source of some of his
noblest efforts and sacrifices. For many years he served as
inspector of prisons in Philadelphia, and thus, by long and
constant practical observation, was accumulated that knowledge
of the human heart in its darkest windings, that often
astonished the objects of his care, when they thought they had
been able cunningly to blind his eyes to their real character
and intentions. After his removal to New York, and when the
occasion for his personal labors in the cause of the slave had
in some measure, ceased or slackened, he threw his whole heart
into the Prison Association, whose aims and plans of action were
entirely in accordance with his views, and indeed, in a great
degree, based on his experience and advice. The intent of the
Prison Association is threefold: first to protect and defend
those who are arrested, and who, as is well known, often suffer
greatly from want of honest and intelligent counsel; secondly,
to attend to the treatment and instruction of convicts while in
prison; and thirdly, on their discharge to render them such
practical aid as shall enable the repentant to return to society
by means of the pursuit of some honest calling. The latter
branch occupied Mr. Hopper's time and attention, and he devoted
himself to it with an affectionate and religious earnestness
that ceased only with his life. No disposition was too perverse
for his efforts at reform; no heart was so black that he did not
at least try the balm of healing upon it; no relapses could tire
out his patience, which, without weak waste of means still
apostolically went on 'hoping all things,' while even a dying
spark of good feeling remained.

Up to February last did this venerable saint continue his
abundant labors; when a severe cold, co-operating with the decay
of nature, brought him his sentence of dismissal. He felt that
it was on the way, and with the serious grace that marked
everything he did, he began at once to gather his earthly robes
about him and prepare for the great change which no one could
dread less. It was hard for those who saw his ruddy cheek and
sparkling eye, his soft brown hair, and sprightly movements to
feel that the time of his departure was drawing nigh: but he
knew and felt it, with more composure than his friends could
summon. It might well be said of this our beloved patriarch,
that his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. To the
last of his daily journeyings through the city, for which he
generally used the rail road, he would never allow the drivers
to stop for him to get on or off the car, feeling, as he used
smilingly to observe, 'very jealous on that point.' Few ever
passed him in the street without asking who he was; for not only
did his primitive dress, his broad-brimmed hat, and his antique
shoe buckles attract attention, but the beauty and benevolence
of his face was sure to fix the eye of ordinary discernment. He
was a living temperance lecture, and those who desire to
preserve good looks could not ask a more infallible receipt,
than that sweet temper and out-flowing benevolence which made
his countenance please every eye. Gay and cheerful as a boy, he
had ever some pleasant anecdote or amusing turn to relate, and
in all perhaps not one without a moral bearing, not thrust
forward, but left to be picked out by the hearer at his leisure.
He seemed born to show how great strictness in essentials could
exist without the least asceticism in trifles. Anything but a
Simeon Stylites in his sainthood, he could go among 'publicans
and sinners' without the least fear of being mistaken by them
for one of themselves. An influence radiated from him that made
itself felt in every company, though he would very likely be the
most modest man present. More gentlemanly manners and address no
court in Christendom need require; his resolute simplicity and
candor, always under the guidance of a delicate taste, never for
a moment degenerated into coarseness or disregard even of the
prejudices of others. His life, even in these minute
particulars, showed how the whole man is harmonized by the sense
of being

'Ever in the Great Taskmaster's eye.'

"He died on the 7th of May, 1852, in his eighty-first year, and
a public funeral in the Tabernacle brought together thousands
desirous of showing respect to his memory."

Mrs. Child has written a full, and in many respects, an exceedingly interesting biography of the subject of this memoir, towards the close of which she says:

"From the numerous notices in papers of all parties and sects, I
will merely quote the following. 'The New York Observer' thus
announces his death:

"'The venerable Isaac T. Hopper, whose placid,
benevolent face has so long irradiated almost every
public meeting for doing good, and whose name,
influence, and labors, have been devoted with an
apostolic simplicity and constancy to humanity, died on
Friday last, at an advanced age. He was a Quaker of that
early sort illustrated by such philanthropists as
Anthony Benezet, Thomas Clarkson, Mrs. Fry, and the
like.

"'He was a most self-denying, patient, loving friend of
the poor, and the suffering of every kind; and his life
was an unbroken history of beneficence. Thousands of
hearts will feel a touch of grief at the news of his
death; for few men have so large a wealth in the
blessings of the poor, and the grateful remembrance of
kindness and benevolence, as he.'

"'The New York Times' contained the following:

"'Most of our readers will call to mind, in connection
with the name of Isaac T. Hopper, the compact, well-knit
figure of a Quaker gentleman, apparently about sixty
years of age, dressed in drab or brown clothes of the
plainest cut, and bearing on his handsome, manly face
the impress of that benevolence with which his whole
heart was filled.

"'He was twenty years older than he seemed. The fountain
of benevolence within freshened his old age with its
continuous flow. The step of the octogenarian was
elastic as that of a boy, his form erect as a mountain
pine.

"'His whole physique was a splendid sample of nature's
handiwork. We see him now with our mind's eye, but with
the eye of flesh we shall see him no more. Void of
intentional offence to God or man, his spirit has joined
its happy kindred in a world where there is neither
sorrow nor perplexity.'

"I sent the following communication to 'The New York Tribune':

"In this world of shadows, few things strengthen the
soul like seeing the calm and cheerful exit of a truly
good man; and this has been my privilege by the bedside
of Isaac T. Hopper.

"He was a man of remarkable endowments, both of head and
heart. His clear discrimination, his unconquerable will,
his total unconsciousness of fear, his extraordinary
tact in circumventing plans he wished to frustrate,
would have made him illustrious as the general of an
army; and these qualities might have become faults, if
they had not been balanced by an unusual degree of
conscientiousness and benevolence. He battled
courageously, not from ambition, but from an inborn love
of truth. He circumvented as adroitly as the most
practiced politician; but it was always to defeat the
plans of those who oppressed God's poor; never to
advance his own self-interest.

"'Few men have been more strongly attached to any
religious society than he was to the Society of Friends,
which he joined in the days of its purity, impelled by
his own religious convictions. But when the time came
that he must either be faithless to duty in the cause of
his enslaved brethren, or part company with the Society
to which he was bound by the strong and sacred ties of
early religious feeling, this sacrifice he also calmly
laid on the altar of humanity.

"'During nine years that I lived in his household, my
respect and affection for him continually increased.
Never have I seen a man who so completely fulfilled the
Scripture injunction, to forgive an erring brother, 'not
only seven times, but seventy times seven.' I have
witnessed relapse after relapse into vice, under
circumstances which seemed like the most heartless
ingratitude to him; but he joyfully hailed the first
symptom of repentance, and was always ready to grant a
new probation.

"'Farewell, thou brave and kind old Friend! The prayers
of ransomed ones ascended to Heaven for thee, and a
glorious company have welcomed thee to the Eternal
City.'"

SAMUEL D. BURRIS,

Referred to by John Hunn, was also a brave conductor on the Underground Rail Road leading down into Maryland (via Hunn's place). Mr. Burris was a native of Delaware, but being a free man and possessing more than usual intelligence, and withal an ardent love of liberty, he left "slave-dom" and moved with his family to Philadelphia. Here his abhorrence of Slavery was greatly increased, especially after becoming acquainted with the Anti-slavery Office and the Abolition doctrine. Under whose auspices or by what influence he was first induced to visit the South with a view of aiding slaves to escape, the writer does not recollect; nevertheless, from personal knowledge, prior to 1851, he well knew that Burris was an accredited agent on the road above alluded to, and that he had been considered a safe, wise, and useful man in his day and calling. Probably the simple conviction that he would not otherwise be doing as he would be done by actuated him in going down South occasionally to assist some of his suffering friends to get the yokes off their necks, and with him escape to freedom. A number were thus aided by Burris. But finally he found himself within the fatal snare; the slave-holders caught him at last, and Burris was made a prisoner in Dover jail. His wife and children were thereby left without their protector and head. The friends of the slave in Philadelphia and elsewhere deeply sympathized with him in this dreadful hour. Being able to use the pen, although he could not write without having his letters inspected, he kept up a constant correspondence with his friends both in Delaware and Philadelphia. John Hunn and Thomas Garrett were as faithful to him as brothers. After lying in prison for many months, his trial came on and Slavery gained the victory. The court decided that he must be sold in or out of the State to serve for seven years. No change, pardon or relief, could be expected from the spirit and power that held sway over Delaware at that time.

The case was one of great interest to Mr. McKim, as indeed to the entire Executive Committee of the Pennsylvania Anti-slavery Society, who felt constrained to do all they could to save the poor man from his threatened fate, although they had not advised or encouraged him in the act for which he was condemned and about to suffer. In viewing his condition, but a faint ray of hope was entertained from one single direction. It was this: to raise money privately and have a man at the auction on the day of sale to purchase him.

John Hunn and Thomas Garrett were too well known as Abolitionists to undertake this mission. A friend indeed, was desirable, but none other would do than such an one as would not be suspected. Mr. McKim thought that a man who might be taken for a negro trader would be the right kind of a man to send on this errand. Garrett and Hunn being consulted heartily acquiesced in this plan, and after much reflection and inquiry, Isaac S. Flint, an uncompromising abolitionist, living in Wilmington, Delaware, was elected to buy Burris at the sale, providing that he was not run up to a figure exceeding the amount in hand.

Flint's abhorrence of Slavery combined with his fearlessness, cool bearing, and perfect knowledge from what he had read of the usages of traders at slave sales, without question admirably fitted him to play the part of a trader for the time being.

When the hour arrived, the doomed man was placed on the auction-block. Two traders from Baltimore were known to be present; how many others the friends of Burris knew not. The usual opportunity was given to traders and speculators to thoroughly examine the property on the block, and most skillfully was Burris examined from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head; legs, arms and body, being handled as horse-jockies treat horses. Flint watched the ways of the traders and followed for effect their example. The auctioneer began and soon had a bid of five hundred dollars. A Baltimore trader was now in the lead, when Flint, if we mistake not, bought off the trader for one hundred dollars. The bids were thus suddenly checked, and Burris was knocked down to Isaac S. Flint (a strange trader). Of course he had left his abolition name at home and had adopted one suited to the occasion. When the crier's hammer indicated the last bid, although Burris had borne up heroically throughout the trying ordeal, he was not by any means aware of the fact that he had fallen into the hands of friends, but, on the contrary, evidently labored under the impression that his freedom was gone. But a few moments were allowed to pass ere Flint had the bill of sale for his property, and the joyful news was whispered in the ear of Burris that all was right; that he had been bought with abolition gold to save him from going south. Once more Burris found himself in Philadelphia with his wife and children and friends, a stronger opponent than ever of Slavery. Having thus escaped by the skin of his teeth, he never again ventured South.

After remaining a year or two in Philadelphia, about the year 1852 he went to California to seek more lucrative employment than he had hitherto found. Becoming somewhat satisfactorily situated he sent for his family, who joined him. In the meanwhile, his interest in the cause of freedom did not falter; he always kept posted on the subject of the Underground Rail Road and Anti-slavery questions; and after the war, when appeals were made on behalf of contrabands who flocked into Washington daily in a state of utter destitution, Burris was among the first to present the matter to the colored churches of San Francisco, with a view of raising means to aid in this good work, and as the result, a handsome collection was taken up and forwarded to the proper committee in Washington.

About three years ago, Samuel D. Burris died, in the city of San Francisco, at about the age of sixty years. To the slave he had been a true friend, and had labored faithfully for the improvement of his own mind as well as the general elevation of his race.

MARIANN, GRACE ANNA, AND ELIZABETH R. LEWIS.

Near Kimberton, in Chester county, Pa., was the birth-place, and, till within a few years, the home of three sisters, Mariann, Grace Anna and Elizabeth R. Lewis, who were among the most faithful, devoted, and quietly efficient workers in the Anti-slavery cause, including that department of it which is the subject of this volume.

Birth-right members of the Society of Friends, they were born into more than the traditional Anti-slavery faith and feeling of that Society. A deep abhorrence of slavery, and an earnest will to put that feeling into act, as opportunity should serve, were in the very life-blood which they drew from father and mother both.

Left fatherless at an early age, they were taught by their mother to remember that their father, on his visits to their maternal grandfather, living then in Maryland, was wont, as he expressed it, to feel the black shadow of slavery over his spirit, from the time he entered, till he left, the State; and that, on his death-bed, he had regretted having let ill-health prevent his meeting with, and joining one of the Anti-slavery Societies of that day. Of the mother's share in the transmission of their hereditary feeling, it is enough, to all acquainted with the history of Anti-slavery work in Pennsylvania, to say that she was sister, not by blood alone, but in heart and soul, to that early, active, untiring abolitionist, Dr. Bartholomew Fussell.

It is easy to see that the children of such parents, growing up under the influence of such a mother, needed no conversion, no sacrifices of prejudice or hostile opinions, to make them Anti-slavery; but were ready, simply as a matter of course, to work for the good cause whenever any way appeared in which their work could serve it. What was called "modern abolitionism," as distinguished from the less aggressive form of opposition to slavery, which preceded the movement pioneered by Garrison, they at once accepted, as soon as it was set before them, through the agents of the American Anti-Slavery Society, in the campaign in Pennsylvania, begun in 1836. Regarding it but as the next step forward in the way they had already entered, they instinctively fell into line with the new movement, assisted in forming a society auxiliary to it, in their own neighborhood, and were constant to the end in working for its advancement.

EARNEST IN THE CAUSE.

Auxiliary to the influences already mentioned, was a very early recollection of seeing a colored man, Henry, bound with ropes and carried off to slavery. Grace Anna, not more than four or five years old at the time, declared that the man's face of agony is before her now; nor is it likely that her sisters were impressed less deeply. Of natures keenly sensitive, they hated slavery, from that hour, as only children of such natures can; and--as yet too young and immature for that charity to have been developed in them, which can see a brother even in the evil-doer, and pity while condemning him,--they even more intensely hated, while they feared, the actors in the outrage, and despised the girl who had betrayed the victim. Ever after, any one of them could be trusted to be faithful to the hunted fugitive, though an army of kidnappers might surround her.

Another of their early recollections was of a white handkerchief which was to be waved from a back window, as a signal of danger, to a colored man at work in a wood near by. And, all the while, the feelings aroused by such events were kept alive by little Anti-slavery poems, which they were wont to learn by heart and recite in the evenings. Grace Anna, on her first visit to Philadelphia, when nine years old, bought a copy of one of these, entitled "Zambo's Story," pleased to recognize in it a favorite of her still earlier childhood.

By means like these they were unconsciously preparing themselves for the predestined tasks of their after-life; and if there were danger that such a strain upon their sympathies, as they often underwent, might prove unhealthful, it was fully counteracted by ball-playing, and all kinds of active out-door amusements of childhood, so that it was never known to result in harm.

As time passed on, their home, always open to fugitives, became an important centre of Underground Rail Road operations for the region extending from Wilmington, Del., into Adams county, Pa.; and they, grown to womanhood, had glided into the management of its very considerable business. They received passengers from Thomas Garrett, and sometimes others, perhaps, of Wilmington, when it was thought unsafe to send them thence directly through Philadelphia; from Wm. and Phebe Wright, in Adams county, and from friends, more than we have room to name, in York, Columbia, and the southern parts of Lancaster and Chester counties; the several lines, from Adams county to Wilmington, converging upon the house of John Vickers, of Lionville, whose wagon, laden apparently with innocent-looking earthen ware from his pottery, sometimes conveyed, unseen beneath the visible load, a precious burden of Southern chattels, on their way to manhood.

[At a later period, the trains from Adams county generally took another course, going to Harrisburg, and on to Canada, by way of the Susquehanna Valley; though still, when pursuit that way was apprehended, the former course was taken.]

These passengers, the Lewises forwarded in diverse ways; usually, in the earlier times, by wagon or carriage, to Richard Moore, of Quakertown, in Bucks county, about thirty miles distant; but later, when abolitionists were more numerous, and easier stages could be safely made, either directly to the writer, or to one or other of ten or twelve stations which had become established at places less remote, in the counties of Chester and Montgomery. During portions of the time, their married sister Rebecca, and her husband, Edwin Fussell, and their uncle, Dr. B. Fussell, and, after him, his brother William, lived on farms adjoining theirs, and were their active helpers in this work.

The receiving and passing on of fugitives, was not all they had to do. Often it was necessary to fit out whole families with clothing suitable for the journey. In cases of emergency they would sometimes gather a sewing-circle from such neighboring families as could be trusted; and, with its help, accomplish rapidly the needed work. One instance is remembered, of a woman, with her little boy, whom they put into girls' attire; and, changing also the woman's dress, sent both, by cars, to Canada, accompanied by a friend. In this kind of work, too, they had generous aid from friends at neighboring stations. From Lawrenceville and Limerick, and Pottstown and Pughtown, came contributions of clothing; at one time a supply which filled compactly three three-bushel bags, and of which a small remainder, still on hand when slavery was abolished, was sent South to the freedmen.

The prudence, skill, and watchful care with which the business was conducted, are well attested by the fact that, so far as can be remembered, during all the many years of their connection with the Underground Rail Road, not a plan miscarried, and not a slave that reached their station was retaken; although among their neighbors there were bitter adversaries of the Anti-slavery cause, eager to find occasion for hostile acts against any abolitionist; and, at times, especially vindictive against the noble sisters, because of their effective co-operation with other friends of Temperance, in preventing the licensing of a liquor-selling tavern in the neighborhood. On one occasion, when, within a week, they had passed on to freedom no less than forty fugitives, eleven of whom had been in the house at once, they were amused at hearing a remark by some of their pro-slavery neighbors, to the effect that "there used to be a pretty brisk trade of running off niggers, but there was not much of it done now."

Though parties of four, five or six sometimes arrived in open day, they seldom sent any away till about nightfall or later, and, whenever the danger was greater than usual, the coming was also at night. The fugitives, in attempting to capture whom, Gorsuch was killed, near Christiana, were brought to them at midnight, by Dr. Fussell; and in this case such caution was observed, that not even the hired girl knew of the presence of persons not of the family.

For one reason or another,--perhaps to let a hot pursuit go by; perhaps to allow opportunity for recovering from fatigue and recruiting exhausted strength, or for earning means to pursue the journey by the common railroads,--it was often thought advisable that passengers should remain with them for a considerable period; and numbers of these were, at different times, employed as laborers in some capacity. Grace Anna testifies that some of the best assistants they ever had in the house or on the farm, were these escaped slaves; that in general they were thrifty and economical, one man, for instance, who spent several years with them, having accumulated five hundred dollars before he went on to Canada; and another, enough to furnish an old coat with a full set of buttons, each of which was a golden half-eagle, covered with cloth, and firmly sewed on, besides an ample supply of good clothing for himself and his wife; and that, almost without exception, they were honest and loyal to their benefactors, and only too happy to find opportunities of showing their gratitude. One man sent back to the sisters a letter of thanks, through a gentleman in England, whither he had gone. And once, when Grace Anna was passing an elegant mansion in Philadelphia, a colored woman rushed out upon her with such an impetuous demonstration of affection, joy, and thankfulness--all thought of fitness of time and place swept away by the swell of strong emotion--as might well have amused, or slightly astonished, the passers in the street, who knew not that in her arms the woman's child had died. But it is no marvel that to her the memory of that poor runaway slave-woman's true affection is more than could have been the warmest welcome from her educated and refined mistress.

One case, of which the sisters for a time had charge, seems worthy of a somewhat more extended mention. In the fall of 1855 a slave named Johnson, who, in fleeing from bondage, had come as far as Wilmington, thinking he saw his master on the train by which he was journeying northward, sprang from the car and hurt his foot severely. The Kennett abolitionists having taken him in hand, and fearing that suspicious eyes were on him in their region, felt it necessary to send him onward without waiting for his wound to heal. He was therefore taken to the Lewises, suffering very much in his removal, and arriving in a condition which required the most assiduous care. For more than four months he remained with them, patient and gentle in his helplessness and suffering, and very thankful for the ministrations of kindness he received. He was nursed as tenderly as if his own sisters had attended him, instead of strangers, and was so carefully concealed that the nearest neighbors knew not of his being with them. Their cousin, Morris Fussell, who lived near, being a physician, they had not to depend for even medical advice upon the outside world.

As the sufferer's wound, in natural course, became offensive, the care of it could not but have been disagreeable as well as toilsome; and the feeble health of one of the sisters at that time must have made heavier the burden to be borne. But it was borne with a cheerful constancy. In a letter which Grace Anna wrote after she had attended for some time in person to the patient, with the care and sympathy which his condition demanded, and begun to feel her strength unequal to the task, in addition to her household duties, she asked a friend in Philadelphia to procure for her a trusty colored woman fit to be a helper in the work, offering higher wages than were common in that region for the services required, and adding that, indeed, they could not stand upon the amount of pay, but must have help, if it could be obtained, though not in a condition to bear undue expenditure. But, she said, the man "is unable to be removed; and if he were not, I know of no place where the charge would not be equally severe." So, in perfect keeping with her character, she just quietly regarded it as a matter of course that it should still continue where it was. And there it did continue until spring, when the man, now able to bear removal, was conveyed to the writer, and, after a time, went thence to Boston. There his foot, pronounced incurable, was amputated, and the abolitionists supplied him with a wooden limb. He then returned and spent another winter with the Lewises, assisting in the household work, and rendering services invaluable at a time when it was almost impossible to obtain female help. The next spring, hoping vainly to recover in a warmer climate from the disease induced by the drain his wounded foot had made upon his system, he went to Hayti, and there died; happy, we may well believe, to have escaped from slavery, though only to have won scarely two years of freedom as an invalid and a cripple.

The sisters were so thoroughly united in their work, as well as in all the experiences of life, that this brief sketch has not attempted what indeed it could not have achieved--a separation of their spheres of beneficent activity. Yet they had each her individual traits and adaptations to their common task; "diversities of gifts, but the same spirit." Elizabeth, although for many years shut out by feeble health from any part requiring much bodily exertion, was ever a wise counsellor, as well as ready with such help as her state of health would warrant. Though weak in body, in spirit she was strong and calm and self-reliant, with a clear, discriminating intellect, a keen sense of right, and a certain solidity and balanced symmetry of the spiritual nature which made her an appreciable power wherever she was known. Of Mariann, Grace Anna says, that if a flash of inspiration was required, it usually came from her. Taught by her love for others, and by a sensitiveness almost preternaturally quick, "she always knew exactly the right thing to do," and put all the poetry of a nature exquisitely fine into her efforts to diffuse around her purity and peace and happiness. Her constant, utterly unselfish endeavors to this end contributed in ample measure to the blessedness of a delightful home, rich in the virtues, charities and graces which make home blessed. Veiled by her modest and retiring disposition, to few beyond the circle of her home were known the beauty and beneficence of her noiseless life; but those who did look in upon it testified her worth in terms so strong as showed how deeply it impressed them. "Just the best woman I ever knew," said a young man for whom she had long cared like a mother. "I cannot remember," said another, "ever hearing from her one ungentle word;" and it may be safely doubted whether she was ever heard to utter such. And one who "knew her every mood" cannot recall an instance of selfishness in her, even when a child. "The most womanly woman I ever knew," declared a friend long closely intimate with her, "and such as would have been adored, if found by any man worthy of her."

The ideal element in her was chastened by sound sense and blended with a quick sagacity; but her shrinking sensitiveness, too keen to be quite healthy, and an extreme of self-forgetfulness, amounting possibly to a defect in one sojourning amid this world's diverse dispositions and experiences, rendered her, on the whole, less balanced and complete than her younger sisters, and not well fitted for rough encounter with life's trials. So it became Grace Anna's province, especially after their mother's death, to stand a shelter between her and whatever would unpleasantly affect her by its contact; to be in some sort as a brother to her, seeing there was no brother in the house. But from this it must not be inferred that Grace Anna is less gifted with the distinctive qualities of her sex. For the native fineness of her spiritual texture, her gentle dignity and feminine delicacy and grace, mark her as "every inch" a true and noble woman. In her combine in happy union the calm strength of soul and self-reliance of her younger, with the poetic ideality and a just degree of the quick sensibility of her elder sister, with better health than either, making her foremost of the three in that executive efficiency which did so much to give their plans the uniform success already mentioned. Kindness and warm affection, clearness of moral vision, and purity of heart, with a lively relish for quiet intellectual pleasures, for society and books adapted to refine, improve and elevate, were among the characteristics common to them all.

Mariann and Elizabeth, having lived to see the triumph of the Right, in the Presidential Proclamation of Freedom to the slaves, have gone from their earthly labors to their heavenly rest; which, we may well believe, is that whereof the poet speaks:

"Rest in harmonious action like the stars,
Doing the deeds which make heaven musical,
The earth a heaven, and brothers of us all."

Grace Anna still continues here, working for human welfare in such fields as still demand the laborer's toil; and finding mental profit and delight in the pursuit of natural science.

CUNNINGHAM'S RACHE.

BY MISS GRACE A. LEWIS.

Among the many fugitives whose stories were full of interest, was that of a woman named Rachel. She was tall, muscular, slight, with an extremely sensitive nervous organization, a brain of large size, and an expression of remarkable sagacity and quickness. She was living in West Chester, Chester county, Pa., when attempts were made to retake her to Slavery. With wonderful swiftness and adroitness she eluded pursuit, and was soon hurried away. Speedily reaching our house, she hid herself away during the day, and in the evening, as a place of greater safety, she was transferred to the house of our uncle, Dr. Fussell, then residing on an adjoining farm. As was his wont, this kind-hearted man soon entered into a conversation with her, and in a few minutes discovered that she had once been a pupil of his during his residence in Maryland many years before.

At the moment of recognition she sprang up, overwhelming him with her manifestations of delight, crying: "You Dr. Fussell? You Dr. Fussell? Don't you remember me? I'm Rache--Cunningham's Rache, down at Bush River Neck." Then receding to view him better, "Lord bless de child! how he is grown!"

Her tongue once loosened, she poured forth her whole history, expressing in every lineament her concentrated abhorrence of her libertine master, "Mort Cunningham." Over that story, it is needful to pass lightly, simply saying, she endured all outraged nature could endure and survive. For the sake of humanity we may trust there were few such fiends even among southern masters as this monster in human shape. Cunningham finally sold her to go further South, with a master whose name cannot now be recalled. This man was in ill health, and after a time he and his wife started northward, bringing Rache with them. On the voyage the master grew worse, and one night when he was about to die, a fearful storm arose, which Rache devoutly believed was sent from Heaven. In describing this scene, she impersonated her surroundings with wonderful vividness and marvellous power. At one moment she was the howling wind; at another the tumultuous sea--then the lurching ship--the bellowing cow frightened by the storm--the devil, who came to carry away her master's soul, and finally the weak, dying man, as he passed to eternity.

They proceeded on their voyage and landed at their place of destination. Rache sees the cow snuffing the land breeze and darting off through the crowd. The captain of the vessel points to the cow and motions her to follow its example. She needs nothing more. Again she is acting--she is now the cow; but human caution, shrewdness, purpose, are lent to animal instinct. She looks around her with wary eye--scents the air--a flash, and she is hidden from the crowd which you see around her--she is free! Making her way northward, she finally arrived at the house of Emmer Kimber, Kimberton, Chester county, Pa., and proving a remarkably capable woman, she remained a considerable time in his family, as a cook. She finally married, and settled in West Chester, where the pair prospered and were soon surrounded by the comforts of a neat home. After several years of peaceful life there, she was one day alarmed, not by the heirs of her dead master, but by the loathed "Mort Cunningham," who, without the shadow of legal right, had come to carry her back to Slavery. Fear lent her wings. She darted into a hatter's shop and out through the back buildings, springing over a dye kettle in her way, and cleared a board fence at a bound. On her way to a place of safety she looked back to see, with keen enjoyment, "Mort Cunningham" falling backward from the fence she had leaped. Secure in a garret, she looked down into the streets below, to see his vacant, dazed look as he sought, unable to find her. Her rendering of the expression of his face at this time, was irresistibly ludicrous, as was that of his whole bearing while searching for her. "Mort Cunningham" did not get her, but whether or not she ever returned to the enjoyment of her happy home, in West Chester, we never knew, as this sudden flight was the last we ever heard of her. She was one of the most wide-awake of human beings, and the world certainly lost in the uneducated slave, an actor of great dramatic power.

FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER.

The narratives and labors of eminent colored men such as Banneker, Douglass, Brown, Garnet, and others, have been written and sketched very fully for the public, and doubtless with advantage to the cause of freedom. But there is not to be found in any written work portraying the Anti-Slavery struggle, (except in the form of narratives,) as we are aware of, a sketch of the labors of any eminent colored woman. We feel, therefore, not only glad of the opportunity to present a sketch not merely of the leading colored poet in the United States, but also of one of the most liberal contributors, as well as one of the ablest advocates of the Underground Rail Road and of the slave.

No extravagant praise of any kind,--only simple facts are needed to portray the noble deeds of this faithful worker.

The want of space forbids more than a brief reference to her early life.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (Watkins being her maiden name) was born in the City of Baltimore in 1825, not of slave parentage, but subjected of course to the oppressive influence which bond and free alike endured under slave laws. Since reaching her majority, in looking back, the following sentences from her own pen express the loneliness of her childhood days. "Have I yearned for a mother's love? The grave was my robber. Before three years had scattered their blight around my path, death had won my mother from me. Would the strong arm of a brother have been welcome? I was my mother's only child." Thus she fell into the hands of an aunt, who watched over her during these early helpless years. Rev. William Watkins, an uncle, taught a school in Baltimore for free colored children, to which she was sent until she was about thirteen years of age. After this period, she was put out to work to earn her own living. She had many trials to endure which she would fain forget; but in the midst of them all she had an ardent thirst for knowledge and a remarkable talent for composition, as she evinced at the age of fourteen in an article which attracted the attention of the lady in whose family she was employed, and others. In this situation she was taught sewing, took care of the children, &c.; and at the same time, through the kindness of her employer, her greed for books was satisfied so far as was possible from occasional half-hours of leisure. She was noted for her industry, rarely trifling away time as most girls are wont to do in similar circumstances. Scarcely had she reached her majority ere she had written a number of prose and poetic pieces which were deemed of sufficient merit to publish in a small volume called "Forest Leaves." Some of her productions found their way into newspapers and attracted attention. The ability exhibited in some of her productions was so remarkable that some doubted and others denied their originality. Of this character we here copy an extract from one of her early prose productions:

CHRISTIANITY.

"Christianity is a system claiming God for its author, and the
welfare of man for its object. It is a system so uniform,
exalted and pure, that the loftiest intellects have acknowledged
its influence, and acquiesced in the justness of its claims.
Genius has bent from his erratic course to gather fire from her
altars, and pathos from the agony of Gethsemane and the
sufferings of Calvary. Philosophy and science have paused amid
their speculative researches and wondrous revelations to gain
wisdom from her teachings and knowledge from her precepts.
Poetry has culled her fairest flowers and wreathed her softest
to bind her Author's 'bleeding brow.' Music has strung her
sweetest lyres and breathed her noblest strains to celebrate his
fame; whilst Learning has bent from her lofty heights to bow at
the lowly cross. The constant friend of man, she has stood by
him in his hour of greatest need. She has cheered the prisoner
in his cell, and strengthened the martyr at the stake. She has
nerved the frail and shrinking heart of woman for high and holy
deeds. The worn and weary have rested their fainting heads upon
her bosom, and gathered strength from her words and courage from
her counsels. She has been the staff of decrepit age and the joy
of manhood in its strength. She has bent over the form of lovely
childhood, and suffered it to have a place in the Redeemer's
arms. She has stood by the bed of the dying, and unveiled the
glories of eternal life, gilding the darkness of the tomb with
the glory of the resurrection."

Her mind being of a strictly religious caste, the effusions from her pen all savor of a highly moral and elevating tone.

About the year 1851 she left Baltimore to seek a home in a Free State, and for a short time resided in Ohio, where she was engaged in teaching. Contrary to her expectations, her adopted home and calling not proving satisfactory, she left that State and came to Pennsylvania as a last resort, and again engaged in teaching at Little York. Here she not only had to encounter the trouble of dealing with unruly children, she was sorely oppressed with the thought of the condition of her people in Maryland. Not unfrequently she gave utterance to such expressions as the following: "Not that we have not a right to breathe the air as freely as anybody else here (in Baltimore), but we are treated worse than aliens among a people whose language we speak, whose religion we profess, and whose blood flows and mingles in our veins.... Homeless in the land of our birth and worse off than strangers in the home of our nativity." During her stay in York she had frequent opportunities of seeing passengers on the Underground Rail Road. In one of her letters she thus alluded to a traveler: "I saw a passenger _per_ the Underground Rail Road yesterday; did he arrive safely? Notwithstanding that abomination of the nineteenth century--the Fugitive Slave Law--men still determine to be free. Notwithstanding all the darkness in which they keep the slaves, it seems that somehow light is dawning upon their minds.... These poor fugitives are a property that can walk. Just to think that from the rainbow-crowned Niagara to the swollen waters of the Mexican Gulf, from the restless murmur of the Atlantic to the ceaseless roar of the Pacific, the poor, half-starved, flying fugitive has no resting-place for the sole of his foot!"

Whilst hesitating whether or not it would be best to continue teaching, she wrote to a friend for advice as follows: "What would you do if you were in my place? Would you give up and go back and work at your trade (dress-making)? There are no people that need all the benefits resulting from a well-directed education more than we do. The condition of our people, the wants of our children, and the welfare of our race demand the aid of every helping hand, the God-speed of every Christian heart. It is a work of time, a labor of patience, to become an effective school teacher; and it should be a work of love in which they who engage should not abate heart or hope until it is done. And after all, it is one of woman's most sacred rights to have the privilege of forming the symmetry and rightly adjusting the mental balance of an immortal mind." "I have written a lecture on education, and I am also writing a small book."

Thus, whilst filling her vocation as a teacher in Little York, was she deeply engrossed in thought as to how she could best promote the welfare of her race. But as she was devoted to the work in hand, she soon found that fifty-three untrained little urchins overtaxed her naturally delicate physical powers; it also happened just about this time that she was further moved to enter the Anti-Slavery field as a lecturer substantially by the following circumstance: About the year 1853, Maryland, her native State, had enacted a law forbidding free people of color from the North from coming into the State on pain of being imprisoned and sold into slavery. A free man, who had unwittingly violated this infamous statute, had recently been sold to Georgia, and had escaped thence by secreting himself behind the wheel-house of a boat bound northward; but before he reached the desired haven, he was discovered and remanded to slavery. It was reported that he died soon after from the effects of exposure and suffering. In a letter to a friend referring to this outrage, Mrs. Harper thus wrote: "Upon that grave I pledged myself to the Anti-Slavery cause."