our trade
(dress-making)? There are no people that need all the benefits resulting
from a well-directed education more than we do. The condition of our
people, the wants of our children, and the welfare of our race demand
the aid of every helping hand, the God-speed of every Christian heart.
It is a work of time, a labor of patience, to become an effective school
teacher; and it should be a work of love in which they who engage should
not abate heart or hope until it is done. And after all, it is one of
woman's most sacred rights to have the privilege of forming the symmetry
and rightly adjusting the mental balance of an immortal mind." "I have
written a lecture on education, and I am also writing a small book."

Thus, whilst filling her vocation as a teacher in Little York, was she
deeply engrossed in thought as to how she could best promote the welfare
of her race. But as she was devoted to the work in hand, she soon found
that fifty-three untrained little urchins overtaxed her naturally
delicate physical powers; it also happened just about this time that she
was further moved to enter the Anti-Slavery field as a lecturer
substantially by the following circumstance: About the year 1853,
Maryland, her native State, had enacted a law forbidding free people of
color from the North from coming into the State on pain of being
imprisoned and sold into slavery. A free man, who had unwittingly
violated this infamous statute, had recently been sold to Georgia, and
had escaped thence by secreting himself behind the wheel-house of a boat
bound northward; but before he reached the desired haven, he was
discovered and remanded to slavery. It was reported that he died soon
after from the effects of exposure and suffering. In a letter to a
friend referring to this outrage, Mrs. Harper thus wrote: "Upon that
grave I pledged myself to the Anti-Slavery cause."

Having thus decided, she wrote in a subsequent letter, "It may be that
God himself has written upon both my heart and brain a commission to use
time, talent and energy in the cause of freedom." In this abiding faith
she came to Philadelphia, hoping that the way would open for usefulness,
and to publish her little book (above referred to). She visited the
Anti-Slavery Office and read Anti-Slavery documents with great avidity;
in the mean time making her home at the station of the Underground Rail
Road, where she frequently saw passengers and heard their melting tales
of sufferin