the school-room on Cherry Street, hospitably opened to them by
Sarah Pugh and Sarah Lewis, and were assailed by the insults of
the populace as they went. It was a meeting memorable to those
who composed it; and was one of many interesting associations of
our early anti-slavery history which cluster around the
school-house, which in those days was always open to the advocacy
of the slave's cause.[61]

An incident in connection with the last of these Conventions,
shows how readily and hopefully, in the beginning of our work, we
turned for help to the churches and religious societies of the
land; and how slowly and painfully we learned their real
character. It is long since we ceased to expect efficient help
from them; but in those first years of our warfare against
slavery, we had not learned that the ecclesiastical standard of
morals in a nation _can not_ be higher than the standard of the
populace generally.

A committee of arrangements appointed to obtain a house in which
the Convention should be held, reported: "That in compliance with
a resolution passed at a meeting of this Society, an application
was made to each of the seven Monthly Meetings of Friends, in
this city, for one of their meeting-houses, in which to hold the
Convention." Two returned respectful answers, declining the
application; three refused to hear it read; one appointed two
persons to examine it, and then decided "that it should be
_returned without being read_," though a few members urged "that
it should be treated more respectfully"; and that from one
meeting no answer was received.

As to other denominations of professed Christians, similar
applications had been frequently refused by them, although there
was one exception which should be ever held in honorable
remembrance by the Abolitionists of Philadelphia. The use of the
church of the Covenanters, in Cherry street, of which Rev. James
M. Wilson was for many years the pastor, was never refused for an
anti-slavery meeting, even in the most perilous days of our
enterprise. Another fact in connection with the Convention of
1839 it is pleasant to remember now, when the faithful friend
whose name it recalls has gone from among us. The Committee of
Arrangements reported that their difficulties and perplexities