No NATION on earth has quite the capacity for forgetting injuries that characterizes the American people. Where the brooding, sullen Saxon temperament is strongest, the clear sky, the swift winds and wide horizons of the new home, and the busy life as well, have altered hereditary characteristics and the capacity for resentment has lessened. Even when most deeply stirred the brutal element has, save in the lowest class, almost totally disappeared. Persistence to the point of doggedness until the end is gained, and then a good-humored shaking of hands and a taking for granted that all differences are buried and the future to hold a common purpose and a common progress to the same end, characterizes the American of to-day. And in the fear that his adversary's feelings may be wounded he refuses to preserve records of strife, and almost forgets himself how the quarrel went on or why it began at all.

The capacity for apology increases year by year. In the reaction against the intolerance and bigotry of our fathers, we forget the sturdy virtues such traits covered or represented. Some one has summed up the American character as a "mush of concession," and our treatment of offenders-whether the criminal pardoned out while the sound of the sentence to just punishment is

still in his ears, or the condoning of all offenses against social law and life-would seem to confirm the verdict. That an emergency finds always determined and resolute men and women ready for it, does not hinder the fact that the arising of such emergency could often have been prevented, had common sense or any wise forecast been used in the beginning. The eagerness to avoid offense and the determination to have every one as comfortable as possible stand always in the way of any review of past differences or future possibilities of difference. Reminiscence is frowned upon, and thus one of the most effectual means of developing manhood and genuine patriotism is lost. The boy's blood may tingle as he hears

"How well Horatius kept the bridge,

In the brave days of old;"

but the brave day that is but yesterday is a sealed book, its story, if told at all, given in a whisper subdued enough to prevent any possibility of discomfort for sensitive or squeamish listener.

"What was it all for, anyway?" asked a boy of twelve not long ago, who, in his school history of the United States had come to the civil war, and who, like a large proportion of the boys of this generation, found it of more remote interest even than the war of the

Revolution. His father had been one of its volunteers, and the family record held name after name of friends fallen in the conflict we are all forgetting, yet the child, true to our American theories, was growing up with no sense of what the issue meant, and with an impatient disregard of worn-out details.

We love mercy so well that we forget that the first clause of the old command is to "do justly," and so year by year the capacity for justice lessens. Keen moral sense is blunted, and life becomes more and more a system of shadings, and black and white, simply clouded, uncertain and dirty gray.

Such word seems necessary in beginning any mention of a party to whose unconquerable and marvelous persistence is due every result of good in the conflict which ended forever all need of their further work. That the early Abolitionists were often bitter, fierce, intolerant, was the inevitable consequence of an intense purpose, and the narrowness that, save in the rarest exceptions, is the necessary accompaniment of intensity. It is never the broad and quiet lake, knowing no obstruction, that rushes on to the sea. It is the stream shut in by rocks and fed from hidden sources that swells and deepens till no man's hand can bind or stay the sweeping current.

It is possible that the time has not yet come for dispassionate statement, but it is also a question if dispassionateness be the only quality it is worth while for Americans to cultivate. Too often it ends as indifferentism, and when that stage is reached progress becomes impossible. In spite of our modern tendencies, it is still worth while to feel strongly, to believe intensely, to live as if life had meaning, and there is no stronger incitement than the knowledge of earnest lives lived through difficulties of which we have but faintest conception, and ending often without any consciousness that their purposes had been recognized or their dreams become realities.

Quiet but always untiring and undaunted workers,

ISAAC T. HOPPER.

these steady, clear-eyed men and women passed over to the majority, and, like the workers of an earlier day, they "received not the promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." Comprehension of their principles, loving remembrance of every faithful act is the only method in which through us they may have full sense of what their labor meant, and thus find the heart of the old words, which, if they mean anything, mean surely that till we do understand, their happiness lacks its full completion.

Philadelphia and Boston represent the most earnest work of a period, the fire and fervor of which are now almost incomprehensible. With Philadelphia, the first step taken was by William Penn, who, in his second visit, labored anxiously to undo certain results of his action which he had not foreseen. In 1685, sending over various directions to his deputies concerning servants to be employed, he had written: "It were better they were blacks, for then a man has them while they live." At this time negroes had been brought in in some numbers, and the most conscientious Friends held slaves, though as early as 1671 George Fox had advised the Friends in Barbadoes to "train up their slaves in the fear of God, to cause their overseers to deal mildly and gently with them, and, after certain years of servitude, they should make them free."

The necessity for such measures had become evident to Penn; and the German Friends who settled Germantown, and who, in 1688, brought before the Yearly Meeting the question "concerning the lawfulness and unlawfulness of buying and keeping negroes," pressed it still further upon his attention. By 1696 so many evils had resulted that advice was issued at the Yearly Meeting" that Friends be careful not to encourage the bringing in any more negroes; and that such that have negroes be careful of them, bring them to meetings, have meetings with them in their families, and restrain them from loose and lewd living as much as in them lies, and from rambling abroad on First-day or other times."

From this date began a very gradual emancipation, but eighty years passed before the entire prohibition of slaveholding was made part of the discipline of the society. In 1700 Penn brought before the Provincial Council a law for regulating the marriage of negroes, but it failed to pass, and the record tells how "he mourned over the state of the slaves, but his attempts to improve their condition by legal enactments were defeated in the house of Assembly."

In his own religious society he was more successful, the minute of the Monthly Meeting in the same year having this item: "Our dear friend and governor having laid before the meeting a concern that hath laid upon his mind for some time concerning the negroes and Indians; that Friends ought to be very careful in discharging a good conscience toward them in all respects, but more especially for the good of their souls, and that they might, as frequent as may be, come to meeting on First-days; upon consideration whereof this meeting concludes to appoint a meeting for the negroes, to be kept once a month, and that their masters give notice thereof in their own families and be present with them at the said meetings as frequent as may be."

Though charged with having died a slaveholder, it was certainly not because no proper means were taken for liberating his slaves, for in his will, made in 1701, Penn liberated every slave in his possession, the will being now in the hands of Thomas Gilpin, of Philadelphia, and containing this clause: "I give to my blacks

LEWIS TAPPAN.

their freedom as is under my hand already, and to old Sam one hundred acres, to be his children's, after he and his wife are dead, forever."

His intentions were not perfectly carried out, as is evident from one of James Logan's letters to Hannah Penn, written in 1721, and now to be seen in the Historical Society's rooms, in which he says: "The proprietor, in a will left with me at his departure hence, gave all his negroes their freedom, but this is entirely private; however, there are very few left." Any failure in action on his executors' part need not, however, be charged upon Penn himself, who must, without question, rank as the first Philadelphia Abolitionist.

Only an occasional remonstrance was heard at rare intervals for many years. The love of money and of power was too strong among the wealthy merchants of the city or the large planters in the outlying country, and nothing could be obtained from the Yearly Meeting but a mild suggestion that further importation of slaves was undesirable, while many a serious, drab-coated member argued with glibness in the same line of defense of oppression and avarice followed by Presbyterian and Episcopalian doctors of divinity, and, indeed, by the churches in general. Nothing could well be darker than the outlook, yet in that darkness a force was working unknown and unseen, the first visible spark showing itself at a point so remote and inconspicuous that it held no suggestion of the steady light soon to shine out with a glow and intensity that even to-day is as powerful as a hundred years ago.

Few souls since the Christian era began have held more of the spirit of the Master than that of John Woolman, living and dying in poverty and obscurity, yet leaving in his journal a record of self-denying labor so simple and tender, not only in spirit but in language also, that one need not wonder at Charles Lamb's enthusiasm as he wrote: "Get the writings of John Woolman by heart." Born in 1720, his first action against the principles of slavery was not taken till 1742, when, in drawing up an instrument for the transfer of a slave, he felt a sudden and strong scruple against such desecration of anything owning a soul. From this dated a life-long testimony against slavery, and for many years he traveled from point to point, never vehement or denunciatory, but pleading always, with a gentleness that proved irresistible, the cause of the oppressed.

In the meantime a quaint and curious figure had en

tered the same way, but with small thought of persuasion or consideration. Coming to Philadelphia from the West Indies where he had become deeply interested in the condition of the slaves, Benjamin Lay, furious at finding the same evil existing there, shook off the dust of the faithless city and took up his dwelling a few miles out. Here he lived in a natural cave, slightly improved by a ceiling of beams, drinking only water from a spring near his door and eating only vegetables. He refused to wear any garment or eat any food whose manufacture or preparation involved the loss of animal life or was the result of slave labor. On the last point John Woolman was in full accord with him, but found it a struggle to wear the undyed homespun which he finally assumed, as the necessary badge of the simplicity he preached.

No concern for the prejudices or feelings of others hampered the career of the irrepressible Benjamin, whose figure was no less eccentric than his life. "Only four and a half feet high, hunchbacked, with projecting chest, legs small and uneven, arms longer than his legs, a huge head, showing only beneath the enormous white hat, large, solemn eyes and a prominent nose; the rest of his face covered with a snowy semi-circle of beard falling low on his breast," this fierce and prophetical brownie or kobold made unexpected dashes into the calm precincts of the Friends' meeting-houses, and was the gad-fly of every assembly. A fury of protest possessed him-a power of energetic denunciation absolutely appalling to the steady-minded Quakers. At one time when the Yearly Meeting was in progress, he suddenly appeared marching up the aisle in his long, white overcoat, regardless of the solemn silence prevailing. He stopped suddenly when midway and exclaiming, "You slaveholders! Why don't you throw off your Quaker coats as I do mine, and show yourselves as you are ?" at the same moment threw off his coat. Underneath was a military coat and a sword dangling against his heels. "Holding in one hand a large book, he drew his sword with the other. 'In the sight of God,' he cried, 'you are as guilty as if you stabbed your slaves to the heart, as I do this book!' suiting the action to the word, and piercing a small bladder filled with the juice of the poke-weed (phytolacca decandra),

which he had concealed between the covers, and sprinkling as with fresh blood those who sat near him."

John Woolman's testimony was of quite another character, but Benjamin Lay was the counterpart as well as forerunner of many less rational agitators who in later years could never separate the offender from the sin often ignorantly and innocently committed. Offensive as his course was felt to be, it was one of the active forces which no doubt had aided in paving the way to the decisive action of 1758, a date important not only in the history of the anti-slavery cause but as one of the most important religious convocations the Christian church has ever known. Through the general business John Woolman sat silent, and silent, too, as one and another faithful Friend gave in their testimony against any further toleration of slavery as a system. Then he rose and made an appeal, whose solemn tenderness still thrills every reader, and which, when eye and voice and all the influence of the gentle yet intensely earnest presence were added, rendered more than momentary op

J. MILLER M'KIM.

position impossible. Then and there the meeting agreed that the injunction of our Lord and Saviour to do to others as we would that others should do to us, should induce Friends who held slaves "to set them at liberty, making a Christian provision for them," and four Friends-John Woolman, John Scarborough, Daniel Stanton and John Sykes-were approved of as suitable persons to visit and treat with such as kept slaves, within the limits of the meeting.

. Naturally, outside these limits there was steady opposition. The record gives many years of effort in which only a proportion could be brought to admit the injustice or wrong of slavery, but it was a proportion that increased yearly. Through all weariness and discouragement John Woolman went his patient way, journeying on foot wherever in the widely-separated settlements the voice of the oppressed seemed to call, and leaving always behind him a memory of pitying love and devotion, before which all defenses fell. But the practice, though abating, required more active measures, and in 1776 came the final action of the Yearly Meeting, all subordinate meetings being then directed to deny the right of membership to such as persisted in holding their

fellow-men as property. Four years before this consummation for which he had spent his life, John Woolman had passed on to the unhampered life and work of a country where bond and free are equal. Deep hopelessness came for a time on those who had worked with him, and who, as he passed from sight, murmured again the sad old words, "we thought this had been he who should have redeemed Israel."

But the thread in this apostolical succession was not lost. If transmigration were an admittable theory, one might say that the soul of John Woolman sought some fitting medium to continue its work, and found lodgment in the baby that in December, 1771, opened its eyes on a world through which it journeyed with all the energy and purpose that had led the elder man-with all his sweetness too, but with a courageous cheer the frailer body had never known. For Isaac Hopper came of sturdy stock, and, though Quaker on one side of the house, did not become a member of the Society of Friends till he was twenty-two, and then through the preaching of William Savery and Mary Ridgeway, two Friends who were often heard in the Philadelphia meetings. Through William Savery's agency Elizabeth Fry turned to the work which he had prophesied would be hers, and which in later life became Isaac Hopper's also. Already the Pennsylvania Abolition Society had been formed, and in his early boyhood Isaac Hopper had had his first experience in aiding a fugitive slave to elude pursuit, and find quarters where none could molest or make him afraid. Married in 1795 and settling permanently in Philadelphia, he became at once a leading member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, as well as one of the overseers of a school for colored children, a memorial of Anthony Benezet, a French Huguenot by birth, whose house remained standing on Chestnut street until 1840. Anthony is described as "a small, eager-faced man, full of zeal and activity, constantly engaged in works of benevolence, which were by no means confined to the blacks, and who was an untiring friend to the unhappy Acadians, many of whom were landed in Philadelphia by the ships which brought them from Nova Scotia."

In this school, and in one founded later for colored adults, he taught two or three evenings each week for many years, and had become known throughout Philadelphia as the friend and legal adviser of colored people under every emergency. From 1795 to 1829, when he removed to New York, each year held its record of courage and zeal in a work more and more necessary as time went on. Runaways were constantly passing through the city, and the laws of that date were neither understood nor attended to. Whenever a negro arrested as a fugitive slave was discharged for want of proof, no fee was paid, but if the verdict made him a slave, and he was surrendered to his claimant, from five to twenty dollars were given to the magistrate. Naturally they made the most of any facts in favor of slavery, and thus there was never wanting opportunity for the efforts of men like Hopper, who took delight in suddenly confounding and upsetting the best-laid plans. A volume would be necessary for the stories which Father Hopper in later years told to all who questioned, and many of which were printed in the Anti-Slavery Standard and other organs of the society, a mine for all who would know the spirit and purpose of one of the most intense and persistent struggles ever made on American soil. Appeal was seldom resorted to, for Father Hopper's wit was as keen as his heart was big, and his personal presence 30 strong and impressive that even his enemies looked with an admiration they could

MARY GREW.

not repress on the noble face and figure of this smiling marplot of all their schemes. With a sense of humor that seemed always to conflict slightly with his Quaker garb and principles, he had also the power of an indignation that could scorch and shrivel; and like all men who have the courage of their convictions, made enemies, who in some cases, after a fury of opposition, turned about and became the strongest of friends.

The yearly meetings of the Anti-Slavery Society brought together a list of names each one representing individualities so marked and positive that only the fervor of a common purpose could have made working together practicable. In that early group women were as prominent as at a later day, and among them all none was more completely oblivious of self than Abigail Goodwin, who lived to see the last chain broken, after seventy-four years of unwearying effort. Her own clothes were patched and forlorn far beyond those of the average beggar, but worn with a calm unconsciousness of their extraordinary character: and, indeed, few who looked on the earnest face, with its half-sad, half-humorous intensity, stopped to consider what garb was worn. She worked for the slave as a mother works for her own children, begging garments which she mended or made over indefatigably; knitting bag after bag of stockings, and sitting up half the night to earn some petty sum turned over instantly to the society. She wrote for every anti-slavery journal, begged in every direction for money, implored friends to take stock in the Underground Railroad, and to the last day of her life burned with an actual passion of good-will; and, it must be added, an equal inability to conceive that a slaveholder might also have some conception of justice and humanity.

Her belief was shared by another woman, equally notable and among the earliest organizers in such workEsther Moore, the wife of Dr. Robert Moore. The passage of the Fugitive Slave bill necessarily intensified all feeling and made dispassionate thought impossible, and though nearly eighty when this crowning iniquity became a portion of United States law, she worked against the results with the eagerness of her youth. For many years she had begged that special notification should be sent her of every fugitive who passed through

Philadelphia, and during the whole time made it her business to supply to each one a gold dollar, the Society being barely able to defray their expenses on to the next station, with no provision for wants when the final one was reached. With larger personal means than Abigail Goodwin, she denied herself in all possible ways that the little coin might be always ready for the empty hand, and almost her last injunction was: "Write to Oliver Johnson, and tell him I die firm in the faith. Mind the slave!"

"Mind the slave !" was the watchword for all. Depression seems to have been unknown. In fact, there was no time for depression, for between the opposition, which is always a stimulant, and the actual work of providing food, clothing and means for the throng of fugitives, there was unfailing and unceasing occupation for all. High-hearted courage and self-sacrifice inspired all alike, and the mere coming together of men and women animated by a profound conviction was in itself almost a Pentecost.

In removing from Philadelphia Isaac Hopper's interest was in degree transferred to the New York society, and the work he had done passed into the hands of Thomas Shipley, for many years President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, of which he became an active member in 1817. Opposition made no impression upon him, and he devoted every energy of his powerful and judicial mind to defense not only of the principles he held, but of every one who needed their application, the thousands who followed him to his grave, in 1836, being the best witnesses of what his life had done for both black and white. Almost the same words might be said of Thomas Garrett, who, though living in Wilmington, was a familiar figure in every public meeting at Philadelphia, and who, while as unobtrusive as Daniel Gibbons, another of the earlier worthies, fought to the end with unceasing vigor, not only for the slave, but for every cause affecting the public good. To give the complete roll of these names, each one deserving full biography, is impossible in present limits, but there is ample material and opportunity for a series of lives, which, if properly given, should hold no less power and fascination than those of Plutarch.

As one by one the names on the society roll received the significant asterisk, new ones, to become no less honored and honorable, took their places. Popular feeling, which, contrary to received belief, is by no means