faithful friend with a vigilance as sleepless as it was
disinterested. The time had now come, however, when something
must be done. The family in whose house she is hid is about to
be broken up, and the house to be vacated, and the girl must
either be rescued from her peril, or she, and all her
accomplices must be exposed. What to do under these
circumstances was the question which brought this woman to
Philadelphia. I advised her to the best of my ability, and sent
her away hopeful, if not rejoicing.

But in many of these cases we can render no aid whatever. All we
can do is to commend them to the God of the oppressed, and labor
on for the day of general deliverance. But, oh! the horrors of
this hell-born system, and the havoc made by this; its last foul
offspring, the Fugitive Slave law. The anguish, the terror, the
agony inflicted by this infamous statute, must be witnessed to
be fully appreciated. You must hear the tale of the
broken-hearted mother, who has just received tidings that her
son is in the hands of man-thieves. You must listen to the
impassioned appeal of the wife, whose husband's retreat has been
discovered, and whose footsteps are dogged by the blood-hounds
of Slavery. You must hear the husband, as I did, a few weeks
ago, himself bound and helpless, beg you for God's sake to save
his wife. You must see such a woman as Hannah Dellam, with her
noble-looking boy at her side, pleading in vain before a
pro-slavery judge, that she is of right free; that her son is
entitled to his freedom; and above all, that her babe, about to
be born, should be permitted to open its eyes upon the light of
liberty. You must hear the judge's decision, remorselessly
giving up the woman with her children born and unborn, into the
hands of their claimants--by them to be carried to the slave
prison, and thence to be sold to a returnless distance from the
remaining but scattered fragments of her once happy family.
These things you must see and hear for yourself before you can
form any adequate idea of the bitterness of this cup which the
unhappy children of oppression along this southern border are
called upon to drink. Manifestations like these have we been
obliged either to witness ourselves, or hear the recital of from
others, almost daily, for weeks together. Our aching heart