t 1847, she states in a letter that she
traveled 32,470 miles, her conveyance being by steamboat when
possible; otherwise by stage-coach. It is suggestive of the wrecks and
delays she had experienced with the shattered coaches and mud roads of
the south and west that, as we are told, she "made a practice of
carrying with her an outfit of hammer, wrench, nails, screws, a coil
of rope, and straps of stout leather, which under many a mishap
sufficed to put things to rights and enable her to pursue her
journey." "I have encountered nothing so dangerous as river fords,"
she writes. "I crossed the Yadkin when it was three-quarters of a mile
wide, rough bottom, often in places rapid currents; the water always
up to the carriage bed, and sometimes flowing in. The horses rested
twice on sand-bars. A few miles beyond the river having just crossed a
deep branch two hundred yards wide, the axletree broke, and away
rolled one of the back wheels."

When she said that river fords were her greatest danger, she must have
forgotten an encounter with a highwayman. She was making a stage
journey in Michigan, and noticed with some consternation that the
driver carried a brace of pistols. To her inquiries he explained that
there had been robberies on the road. "Give me the pistols," she said;
"I will take care of them." More in awe of her than of robbers, the
driver reluctantly obeyed. Passing through a dismal forest the
expected happened. A man seized the horses and demanded her purse. She
made him a little speech, asked if he was not ashamed, told him her
business, and concluded, "If you have been unfortunate, are in
distress and in want of money, I will give you some." Meanwhile the
robber had turned "deathly pale," and when she had finished,
exclaimed, "My God, that voice." He had once heard her address the
prisoners in the Philadelphia penitentiary. He begged her to pass, and
declined to take the money she offered. She insisted, lest he might be
again tempted before he found employment. People obeyed when she
insisted, and he took her gift and disappeared.

Think of the hotel accommodations,--the tables and beds,--she must
have encountered in these wild journeys. This is the woman who, a few
years ago, seemed to be dying with hemorrhages of the lungs. Did she
have no more of them? Oh, yes; we are assured that "again and again
she was attacked with hemorrhages and again and again prostrated by
malarial fever." A physician said, "Her sy