him in was
impossible, and there they stood, equally strong, firmly braced, she on
one side of the door and he on the other. But the blacking he was
determined she should have; so, gauging her probable position, with one
desperate effort he squeezed in a little farther and, raising the
bottle, he poured the contents on her head. The blacking went streaming
down over her face, white robe, and person, and left her looking more
like a bronze fury than one of Eve's most charming daughters. A yard or
more of the carpet was ruined, the wallpaper and bedclothes spattered,
and the poor victim was unfit to be seen for a week at least. Charley
had a good excuse for his extreme measures, for, as we all by turn
played our tricks on him, it was necessary to keep us in some fear of
punishment. This was but one of the many outrageous pranks we
perpetrated on each other. To see us a few hours later, all absorbed in
an anti-slavery or temperance convention, or dressed in our best, in
high discourse with the philosophers, one would never think we could
have been guilty of such consummate follies. It was, however, but the
natural reaction from the general serious trend of our thoughts.

It was in Peterboro, too, that I first met one who was then considered
the most eloquent and impassioned orator on the anti-slavery platform,
Henry B. Stanton. He had come over from Utica with Alvin Stewart's
beautiful daughter, to whom report said he was engaged; but, as she soon
after married Luther R. Marsh, there was a mistake somewhere. However,
the rumor had its advantages. Regarding him as not in the matrimonial
market, we were all much more free and easy in our manners with him than
we would otherwise have been. A series of anti-slavery conventions was
being held in Madison County, and there I had the pleasure of hearing
him for the first time. As I had a passion for oratory, I was deeply
impressed with his power. He was not so smooth and eloquent as Phillips,
but he could make his audience both laugh and cry; the latter, Phillips
himself said he never could do. Mr. Stanton was then in his prime, a
fine-looking, affable young man, with remarkable conversational talent,
and was ten years my senior, with the advantage that number of years
necessarily gives.

Two carriage-loads of ladies and gentlemen drove off every morning,
sometimes ten miles, to one of these conventions, returning late at
night. I shall never forget those charming drives over the