urney. It was
necessary that I should start on the morrow, and the intervening time,
with a small allowance for sleep, was spent in providing for the care of
the farm and homestead during my absence.

So the next morning I took the stage for Boston, stopping at the ancient
hostelry known as the Eastern Stage Tavern; and on the day following, in
company with William Lloyd Garrison, I left for New York. At that city
we were joined by other delegates, among them David Thurston, a
Congregational minister from Maine. On our way to Philadelphia, we took,
as a matter of necessary economy, a second-class conveyance, and found
ourselves, in consequence, among rough and hilarious companions, whose
language was more noteworthy for strength than refinement. Our worthy
friend the clergyman bore it awhile in painful silence, but at last felt
it his duty to utter words of remonstrance and admonition. The leader of
the young roisterers listened with a ludicrous mock gravity, thanked him
for his exhortation, and, expressing fears that the extraordinary effort
had exhausted his strength, invited him to take a drink with him. Father
Thurston buried his grieved face in his cloak-collar, and wisely left the
young reprobates to their own devices.

On reaching Philadelphia, we at once betook, ourselves to the humble
dwelling on Fifth Street occupied by Evan Lewis, a plain, earnest man and
lifelong abolitionist, who had been largely interested in preparing the
way for the Convention. In one respect the time of our assembling seemed
unfavorable. The Society of Friends, upon whose cooperation we had
counted, had but recently been rent asunder by one of those unhappy
controversies which so often mark the decline of practical righteousness.
The martyr-age of the society had passed, wealth and luxury had taken the
place of the old simplicity, there was a growing conformity to the maxims
of the world in trade and fashion, and with it a corresponding
unwillingness to hazard respectability by the advocacy of unpopular
reforms. Unprofitable speculation and disputation on one hand, and a
vain attempt on the other to enforce uniformity of opinion, had
measurably lost sight of the fact that the end of the gospel is love, and
that charity is its crowning virtue. After a long and painful struggle
the disruption had taken place; the shattered fragments, under the name
of Orthodox and Hicksite, so like and yet so separate in feeling,
confronted eac