for the first time, I met Lydia Maria Child, Abby Kelly, Paulina Wright, Elizabeth Peabody, Maria Chapman and her beautiful sisters, the Misses Weston, Oliver and Marianna Johnson, Joseph and Thankful Southwick and their three bright daughters. The home of the Southwicks was always a harbor of rest for the weary, where the anti-slavery hosts were wont to congregate, and where one was always sure to meet someone worth knowing. Their hospitality was generous to an extreme, and so boundless that they were, at last, fairly eaten out of house and home. Here, too, for the first time, I met Theodore Parker, John Pierpont, John G. Whittier, Emerson, Alcott, Lowell, Hawthorne, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel E. Sewall, Sidney Howard Gay, Pillsbury, Foster, Frederick Douglass, and last though not least, those noble men, Charles Hovey and Francis Jackson, the only men who ever left any money to the cause of woman suffrage. I also met Miss Jackson, afterward Mrs. Eddy, who left half her fortune, fifty thousand dollars, for the same purpose.
I was a frequent visitor at the home of William Lloyd Garrison. Though he had a prolonged battle to fight in the rough outside world, his home was always a haven of rest. Mrs. Garrison was a sweet-tempered, conscientious woman, who tried, under all circumstances, to do what was right. She had sound judgment and rare common sense, was tall and fine-looking, with luxuriant brown hair, large tender blue eyes, delicate features, and affable manners. They had an exceptionally fine family of five sons and one daughter. Fanny, now the wife of Henry Villard, the financier, was the favorite and pet. All the children, in their maturer years, have fulfilled the promises of their childhood. Though always in straitened circumstances, the Garrisons were very hospitable. It was next to impossible for Mr. Garrison to meet a friend without inviting him to his house, especially at the close of a convention.
I was one of twelve at one of his impromptu tea parties. We all took it for granted that his wife knew we were coming, and that her preparations were already made. Surrounded by half a dozen children, she was performing the last act in the opera of Lullaby, wholly unconscious of the invasion downstairs. But Mr. Garrison was equal to every emergency, and, after placing his guests at their ease in the parlor, he hastened to the nursery, took off his coat, and rocked the baby until his wife had disposed of the remaining children. Then they had a consultation about the tea, and when, basket in hand, the good man sallied forth for the desired viands, Mrs. Garrison, having made a hasty toilet, came down to welcome her guests. She was as genial and self-possessed as if all things had been prepared. She made no apologies for what was lacking in the general appearance of the house nor in the variety of the menu—it was sufficient for her to know that Mr. Garrison was happy in feeling free to invite his friends. The impromptu meal was excellent, and we had a most enjoyable evening. I have no doubt that Mrs. Garrison had more real pleasure than if she had been busy all day making preparations and had been tired out when her guests arrived.
The anti-slavery conventions and fairs, held every year during the holidays, brought many charming people from other States, and made Boston a social center for the coadjutors of Garrison and Phillips. These conventions surpassed any meetings I had ever attended; the speeches were eloquent and the debates earnest and forcible. Garrison and Phillips were in their prime, and slavery was a question of national interest. The hall in which the fairs were held, under the auspices of Mrs. Chapman and her cohorts, was most artistically decorated. There one could purchase whatever the fancy could desire, for English friends, stimulated by the appeals of Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Pease, used to send boxes of beautiful things, gathered from all parts of the Eastern Continent. There, too, one could get a most recherché luncheon in the society of the literati of Boston; for, however indifferent many were to slavery per se, they enjoyed these fairs, and all classes flocked there till far into the night. It was a kind of ladies' exchange for the holiday week, where each one was sure to meet her friends. The fair and the annual convention, coming in succession, intensified the interest in both. I never grew weary of the conventions, though I attended all the sessions, lasting, sometimes, until eleven o'clock at night. The fiery eloquence of the abolitionists, the amusing episodes that occurred when some crank was suppressed and borne out on the shoulders of his brethren, gave sufficient variety to the proceedings to keep the interest up to high-water mark.
There was one old man dressed in white, carrying a scythe, who imagined himself the personification of "Time," though called "Father Lampson." Occasionally he would bubble over with some prophetic vision, and, as he could not be silenced, he was carried out. He usually made himself as limp as possible, which added to the difficulty of his exit and the amusement of the audience. A ripple of merriment would unsettle, for a moment, even the dignity of the platform when Abigail Folsom, another crank, would shout from the gallery, "Stop not, my brother, on the order of your going, but go." The abolitionists were making the experiment, at this time, of a free platform, allowing everyone to speak as moved by the spirit, but they soon found that would not do, as those evidently moved by the spirit of mischief were quite as apt to air their vagaries as those moved by the spirit of truth.
However, the Garrisonian platform always maintained a certain degree of freedom outside its regular programme, and, although this involved extra duty in suppressing cranks, yet the meeting gained enthusiasm by some good spontaneous speaking on the floor as well as on the platform. A number of immense mass meetings were held in Faneuil Hall, a large, dreary place, with its bare walls and innumerable dingy windows. The only attempt at an ornament was the American eagle, with its wings spread and claws firmly set, in the middle of the gallery. The gilt was worn off its beak, giving it the appearance, as Edmund Quincy said, of having a bad cold in the head.
This old hall was sacred to so many memories connected with the early days of the Revolution that it was a kind of Mecca for the lovers of liberty visiting Boston. The anti-slavery meetings held there were often disturbed by mobs that would hold the most gifted orator at bay hour after hour, and would listen only to the songs of the Hutchinson family. Although these songs were a condensed extract of the whole anti-slavery constitution and by-laws, yet the mob was as peaceful under these paeans to liberty as a child under the influence of an anodyne. What a welcome and beautiful vision that was when the four brothers, in blue broadcloth and white collars, turned down à la Byron, and little sister Abby in silk, soft lace, and blue ribbon, appeared on the platform to sing their quaint ballads of freedom! Fresh from the hills of New Hampshire, they looked so sturdy, so vigorous, so pure, so true that they seemed fitting representatives of all the cardinal virtues, and even a howling mob could not resist their influence. Perhaps, after one of their ballads, the mob would listen five minutes to Wendell Phillips or Garrison until he gave them some home thrusts, when all was uproar again. The Northern merchants who made their fortunes out of Southern cotton, the politicians who wanted votes, and the ministers who wanted to keep peace in the churches, were all as much opposed to the anti-slavery agitation as were the slaveholders themselves. These were the classes the mob represented, though seemingly composed of gamblers, liquor dealers, and demagogues. For years the anti-slavery struggle at the North was carried on against statecraft, priestcraft, the cupidity of the moneyed classes, and the ignorance of the masses, but, in spite of all these forces of evil, it triumphed at last.
I was in Boston at the time that Lane and Wright, some metaphysical Englishmen, and our own Alcott held their famous philosophical conversations, in which Elizabeth Peabody took part. I went to them regularly. I was ambitious to absorb all the wisdom I could, but, really, I could not give an intelligent report of the points under discussion at any sitting. Oliver Johnson asked me, one day, if I enjoyed them. I thought, from a twinkle in his eye, that he thought I did not, so I told him I was ashamed to confess that I did not know what they were talking about. He said, "Neither do I,—very few of their hearers do,—so you need not be surprised that they are incomprehensible to you, nor think less of your own capacity."
I was indebted to Mr. Johnson for several of the greatest pleasures I enjoyed in Boston. He escorted me to an entire course of Theodore Parker's lectures, given in Marlborough Chapel. This was soon after the great preacher had given his famous sermon on "The Permanent and Transient in Religion," when he was ostracised, even by the Unitarians, for his radical utterances, and not permitted to preach in any of their pulpits. His lectures were deemed still more heterodox than that sermon. He shocked the orthodox churches of that day—more,
