ghts. It may have been a year or more later
that Dr. Howe said to me: "Do you remember that man of whom I spoke to
you,--the one who wished to be a saviour for the negro race?" I replied
in the affirmative. "That man," said the doctor, "will call here this
afternoon. You will receive him. His name is John Brown." Thus
admonished, I watched for the visitor, and prepared to admit him myself
when he should ring at the door.

[Illustration: JOHN BROWN

_From a photograph about 1857._]

This took place at our house in South Boston, where it was not at all
_infra dig._ for me to open my own door. At the expected time I heard
the bell ring, and, on answering it, beheld a middle-aged, middle-sized
man, with hair and beard of amber color, streaked with gray. He looked a
Puritan of the Puritans, forceful, concentrated, and self-contained. We
had a brief interview, of which I only remember my great gratification
at meeting one of whom I had heard so good an account. I saw him once
again at Dr. Howe's office, and then heard no more of him for some time.

I cannot tell how long after this it was that I took up the "Transcript"
one evening, and read of an attack made by a small body of men on the
arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Dr. Howe presently came in, and I told him
what I had just read. "Brown has got to work," he said. I had already
arrived at the same conclusion. The rest of the story is matter of
history: the failure of the slaves to support the movement initiated for
their emancipation, the brief contest, the inevitable defeat and
surrender, the death of the rash, brave man upon the scaffold. All this
is known, and need not be repeated here. In speaking of it, my husband
assured me that John Brown's plan had not been so impossible of
realization as it appeared to have been after its failure. Brown had
been led to hope that, upon a certain signal, the slaves from many
plantations would come to him in such numbers that he and they would
become masters of the situation with little or no bloodshed. Neither he
nor those who were concerned with him had it at all in mind to stir up
the slaves to acts of cruelty and revenge. The plan was simply to
combine them in large numbers, and in a position so strong that the
question of their freedom would be decided then and there, possibly
without even a battle.

I confess that the whole scheme appeared to me wild and chimerical. Of
its details I knew nothing, and have never learned more. No