some home thrusts, when all was uproar again. The Northern
merchants who made their fortunes out of Southern cotton, the
politicians who wanted votes, and the ministers who wanted to keep peace
in the churches, were all as much opposed to the anti-slavery agitation
as were the slaveholders themselves. These were the classes the mob
represented, though seemingly composed of gamblers, liquor dealers, and
demagogues. For years the anti-slavery struggle at the North was carried
on against statecraft, priestcraft, the cupidity of the moneyed classes,
and the ignorance of the masses, but, in spite of all these forces of
evil, it triumphed at last.

I was in Boston at the time that Lane and Wright, some metaphysical
Englishmen, and our own Alcott held their famous philosophical
conversations, in which Elizabeth Peabody took part. I went to them
regularly. I was ambitious to absorb all the wisdom I could, but,
really, I could not give an intelligent report of the points under
discussion at any sitting. Oliver Johnson asked me, one day, if I
enjoyed them. I thought, from a twinkle in his eye, that he thought I
did not, so I told him I was ashamed to confess that I did not know what
they were talking about. He said, "Neither do I,--very few of their
hearers do,--so you need not be surprised that they are incomprehensible
to you, nor think less of your own capacity."

I was indebted to Mr. Johnson for several of the greatest pleasures I
enjoyed in Boston. He escorted me to an entire course of Theodore
Parker's lectures, given in Marlborough Chapel. This was soon after the
great preacher had given his famous sermon on "The Permanent and
Transient in Religion," when he was ostracised, even by the Unitarians,
for his radical utterances, and not permitted to preach in any of their
pulpits. His lectures were deemed still more heterodox than that sermon.
He shocked the orthodox churches of that day--more, even, than Ingersoll
has in our times.

The lectures, however, were so soul-satisfying to me that I was
surprised at the bitter criticisms I heard expressed. Though they were
two hours long, I never grew weary, and, when the course ended, I said
to Mr. Johnson:

"I wish I could hear them over again."

"Well, you can," said he, "Mr. Parker is to repeat them in
Cambridgeport, beginning next week." Accordingly we went there and heard
them again with equal satisfaction.

During the winter in Boston I attended all the lectures, chur