, 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.

[Illustration: GRACE ANNE LEWIS]

[Illustration: MRS. FRANCIS E. W. HARPER]

[Illustration: JOHN NEEDLES.]

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
predestine