churches, and the cabins not excepted,
she has found a vast field and open doors to teach and speak on the
themes of education, temperance, and good home building, industry,
morality, and the like, and never lacked for evidences of hearty
appreciation and gratitude.

Everywhere help was needed, and her heart being deeply absorbed in the
cause she willingly allowed her sympathies to impel her to perform most
heroic services.

With her it was no uncommon occurrence, in visiting cities or towns, to
speak at two, three, and four meetings a day; sometimes to promiscuous
audiences composed of everybody who would care to come.

But the kind of meetings she took greatest interest in were meetings
called exclusively for women. In this attitude she could pour out her
sympathies to them as she could not do before a mixed audience; and
indeed she felt their needs were far more pressing than any other class.

And now I am prepared to most fully indorse her story. I doubt whether
she could, if she had tried ever so much, have hit upon a subject so
well adapted to reach a large number of her friends and the public with
both entertaining and instructive matter as successfully as she has done
in this volume.

The grand and ennobling sentiments which have characterized all her
utterances in laboring for the elevation of the oppressed will not be
found missing in this book.

The previous books from her pen, which have been so very widely
circulated and admired, North and South--"Forest Leaves," "Miscellaneous
Poems," "Moses, a Story of the Nile," "Poems," and "Sketches of Southern
Life" (five in number)--these, I predict, will be by far eclipsed by
this last effort, which will, in all probability, be the crowning effort
of her long and valuable services in the cause of humanity.

While, as indicated, Mrs. Harper has done a large amount of work in the
South, she has at the same time done much active service in the
temperance cause in the North, as thousands of this class can testify.

Before the war she was engaged as a speaker by anti-slavery
associations; since then, by appointment of the Women's Christian
Temperance Union, she has held the office of "Superintendent of Colored
Work" for years. She has also held the office of one of the Directors of
the Women's Congress of the United States.

Under the auspices of these influential, earnest, and intelligent
associations, she has been seen often on their platforms with the
lead