you for the brave and noble words that you have spoken. Enclosed
I send you a few dollars as a token of my gratitude, reverence
and love.

Yours respectfully,

FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS.

Post Office address: care of William Still, 107 Fifth St.,
Philadelphia, Penn.

May God, our own God, sustain you in the hour of trial. If there
is one thing on earth I can do for you or yours, let me be
apprized. I am at your service.

Not forgetting Brown's comrades, who were then lying in prison under
sentence of death, true to the best impulses of her generous heart, she
thus wrote relative to these ill-fated prisoners, from Montpelier, Dec.
12th:

"I thank you for complying with my request. (She had previously
ordered a box of things to be forwarded to them.) And also that
you wrote to them. You see Brown towered up so bravely that
these doomed and fated men may have been almost overlooked, and
just think that I am able to send one ray through the night
around them. And as their letters came too late to answer in
time, I am better satisfied that you wrote. I hope the things
will reach them. Poor doomed and fated men! Why did you not send
them more things? Please send me the bill of expense.... Send me
word what I can do for the fugitives. Do you need any money? Do
I not owe you on the old bill (pledge)? Look carefully and see
if I have paid all. Along with this letter I send you one for
Mr. Stephens (one of Brown's men), and would ask you to send him
a box of nice things every week till he dies or is acquitted. I
understand the balls have not been extracted from him. Has not
this suffering been overshadowed by the glory that gathered
around the brave old man?... Spare no expense to make the last
hours of his (Stephens') life as bright as possible with
sympathy.... Now, my friend, fulfil this to the letter. Oh, is
it not a privilege, if you are sisterless and lonely, to be a
sister to the human race, and to place your heart where it may
throb close to down-trodden humanity?"

On another occasion in writing from the lecturing field hundreds of
miles away from Philadelphia, the sympathy she felt for the fugitives
found expression in the following language:

"How fared the girl who came robed in male attire? Do write me
every time you write how many come to your house; and, my dear