, she says: "We have been almost
too busy to look out on the beautiful winter landscape, and have been
wrought up by our daily researches almost to a frenzy of justice,
intolerance, and enthusiasm to crush the viper that is eating out the
vitals of the nation. Oh, what a blessed privilege to be engaged in
labor for the oppressed! We often think, if the slaves are never
emancipated, we are richly rewarded by the hallowed influence of
abolition principles on our own hearts."

In a recent letter to me, Mr. Weld makes some interesting statements
respecting this work. I will give them in his own words:--

"The fact is, those dear souls spent six months, averaging more than
six hours a day, in searching through thousands upon thousands of
Southern newspapers, marking and cutting out facts of slave-holding
disclosures for the book. I engaged of the Superintendent of the New
York Commercial Reading-Room all his papers published in our Southern
States and Territories. These, after remaining upon the files one
month, were taken off and sold. Thus was gathered the raw material for
the manufacture of 'Slavery As It Is.' After the work was finished, we
were curious to know how many newspapers had been examined. So we went
up to our attic and took an inventory of bundles, as they were packed
heap upon heap. When our count had reached _twenty thousand_
newspapers, we said: 'There, let that suffice.' Though the book had in
it many thousand facts thus authenticated by the slave-holders
themselves, yet it contained but a tiny fraction of the nameless
atrocities gathered from the papers examined."

Besides this absorbing occupation, the sisters busied themselves that
winter getting up a petition to Congress for the abolition of slavery
in the District of Columbia, and walked many miles, day after day, to
obtain signatures, meeting with patience, humility, and sweetness the
frequent rebuffs of the rude and the ignorant, feeling only pity for
them, and gratitude to God who had touched and softened their own
hearts and enlightened their minds.

They received repeated invitations from the different anti-slavery
organizations to again enter the lecture field, and great
disappointment was felt by all who had once listened to them that they
should have retired from public work.

Sarah speaks of attending "meeting," as, from habit, she called it,
and doubtless they all went regularly, as Mr. Weld was a communicant
of the Presbyterian Church