and he earnestly advised his members, particularly the
women, not to go and hear them. At a meeting, also, at Pepperell,
where they had to speak in a barn, on account of the feeling against
them, she mentions that an Orthodox clergyman opened the meeting with
prayer, but went out immediately after finishing, declaring that he
would as soon rob a hen-roost as remain there and hear a woman speak
in public.

This, however, did not prevent the crowding of the barn "almost to
suffocation," and deep attention on the part of those assembled.

In the face of all this censure and ridicule, the two sisters
continued in the discharge of a duty to which they increasingly felt
they were called from on high. The difficulties, inconveniences, and
discomforts to which they were constantly subjected, and of which the
women reformers of the present day know so little, were borne
cheerfully, and accepted as means of greater refinement and
purification for the Lord's work. They were often obliged to ride six
or eight or ten miles through the sun or rain, in stages or wagons
over rough roads to a meeting, speak two hours, and return the same
distance to their temporary abiding-place. For many weeks they held
five and six meetings a week, in a different place every time, were
often poorly lodged and poorly fed, especially the latter, as they ate
nothing which they did not know to be the product of free labor;
taking cold frequently, and speaking when ill enough to be in bed, but
sustained through all by faith in the justice of their cause, and by
their simple reliance upon the love and guidance of an Almighty
Father. The record of their journeyings, as copied by Angelina from
her day-book for the benefit of Jane Smith, is very interesting, as
showing how, in spite of continued opposition to them, anti-slavery
sentiment grew under their eloquent preaching. Wendell Phillips says:
"I can never forget the impulse our cause received when those two
sisters doubled our hold on New England in 1837 and 1838, and made a
name, already illustrious in South Carolina by great services, equally
historical in Massachusetts, in the two grandest movements of our
day."

Angelina's eloquence must have been something marvellous. The sweet,
persuasive voice, the fluent speech, and occasionally a flash of the
old energy, were all we who knew her in later years were granted, to
show us what had been; but it was enough to confirm the accounts given
by those who