he kindness of the voice and eyes made me cry. I
told her I could not leave my husband.

"Then let him support you, or send you home until he can! I have seen
too many like you go to destruction here. Go home."

I said that I could never go to destruction, but she interrupted me:

"You know nothing about it. You are a mere baby. They all thought as you
do. Go home to your mother!"

"But I never can go to destruction! No evil can befall me, for He that
keepeth Israel slumbers not nor sleeps."

She concluded to give me work, but said:

"I will send it by a servant. Don't you come here."

I never thrust my anti-slavery opinions on any one, but every Southerner
inquired concerning them, and I gave true answers. There were many
boarders in the house, and one evening when there were eighteen men in
the parlor, these questions brought on a warm discussion, when one said:

"You had better take care how you talk, or we will give you a coat of
tar and feathers."

I agreed to accept such gratuitous suit, and a Mississippi planter, who
seemed to realize the situation, said gently:

"Indeed, madam, it is not safe for you to talk as you do."

"When reminded of constitutional guarantees for freedom of speech, and
his enjoyment of it in my native State, he replied:

"There is no danger in Pennsylvania from freedom of speech, but if
people were allowed to talk as you do here, it would overthrow our
institutions."

There were mobs in the air. The mayor closed a Sunday-school, on the
ground that in it slaves were taught to read. The teacher, a New England
woman, denied the charge, and claimed that only free children had been
taught, while slaves were orally instructed to obey their masters, as
good Presbyterians, who hoped to escape the worm that never dies. Her
defense failed, but seemed to establish the right of free colored people
to a knowledge of the alphabet, but there was no school for them, and I
thought to establish one.

Jerry Wade, the Gault House barber, was a mulatto, who had bought
himself and family, and acquired considerable real estate. In the back
of one of his houses, lived his son with a wife and little daughter. We
rented the front, and mother sent me furniture. This was highly genteel,
for it gave us the appearance of owning slaves, and Olivia, young Wade's
wife, represented herself as my slave, to bring her and her child
security. As a free negro, she labored under many disadvantages, so
begged me t