against the habits to which such
indulgences naturally led. To Sarah he paid particular attention, and
was often heard to declare that if she had been of the other sex she
would have made the greatest jurist in the land.

Children are born without prejudice, and the young children of Southern
planters never felt or made any difference between their white and
colored playmates. So that there is nothing singular in the fact that
Sarah Grimke early felt such an abhorrence of the whole institution of
slavery that she was sure it was born in her.

When Sarah was twelve years old two important events occurred to
interrupt the even tenor of her life. Her brother Thomas was sent off to
Yale College, leaving her companionless; but a little sister, Angelina
Emily, the last child of her parents, and the pet and darling of Sarah
from the moment the light dawned upon her blue eyes, came to take his
place. Sarah almost became a mother to this little one; whither she led,
Angelina followed closely.

In 1818 Judge Grimke's health began to decline. So faithful did Sarah
nurse him that when it was decided that he should go to Philadelphia,
she was chosen to accompany him. This first visit to the North was the
most important event of Sarah's life, for the influences and impressions
there received gave some shape to her vague and wayward fancies, and
showed her a gleam of the light beyond the tangled path which still
stretched before her.

Her father died; and in the vessel which carried his remains from
Philadelphia Sarah met a party of Friends. She talked with them on
religious matters, and after a few months acknowledged to one of them,
in the course of a correspondence, her entire conversion to Quakerism.
Ere long circumstances and the inharmonious life in her family urged her
again to seek Philadelphia, where she arrived in May, 1821. Angelina
remained at Charleston, where she grew up a gay, fashionable girl.

We pass over the interesting correspondence which, from this time
onward, was carried on between the sisters.

The strong contrast between Sarah and Angelina Grimke was shown not
only in their religious feelings, but in their manner of treating the
ordinary concerns of life, and in carrying out their convictions of
duty. In her humility, and in her strong reliance on the "inner light,"
Sarah refused to trust her own judgment, even in the merest trifles,
such as the lending of a book to a friend, postponing the writing of