friend, if you have that much in hand of mine from my books,
will you please pay the Vigilance Committee two or three dollars
for me to help carry on the glorious enterprise. Now, please do
not write back that you are not going to do any such thing. Let
me explain a few matters to you. In the first place, I am able
to give something. In the second place, I am willing to do
so.... Oh, life is fading away, and we have but an hour of time!
Should we not, therefore, endeavor to let its history gladden
the earth? The nearer we ally ourselves to the wants and woes of
humanity in the spirit of Christ, the closer we get to the great
heart of God; the nearer we stand by the beating of the pulse of
universal love."

Doubtless it has not often been found necessary for persons desirous of
contributing to benevolent causes to first have to remove anticipated
objections. Nevertheless in some cases it would seem necessary to
admonish her not to be quite so liberal; to husband with a little more
care her hard-earned income for a "rainy day," as her health was not
strong.

"My health," she wrote at that time, "is not very strong, and I may have
to give up before long. I may have to yield on account of my voice,
which I think, has become somewhat affected. I might be so glad if it
was only so that I could go home among my own kindred and people, but
slavery comes up like a dark shadow between me and the home of my
childhood. Well, perhaps it is my lot to die from home and be buried
among strangers; and yet I do not regret that I have espoused this
cause; perhaps I have been of some service to the cause of human rights,
and I hope the consciousness that I have not lived in vain, will be a
halo of peace around my dying bed; a heavenly sunshine lighting up the
dark valley and shadow of death."

Notwithstanding this yearning for home, she was far from desiring at her
death, a burial in a Slave State, as the following clearly expressed
views show:

"I have lived in the midst of oppression and wrong, and I am
saddened by every captured fugitive in the North; a blow has
been struck at my freedom, in every hunted and down-trodden
slave in the South; North and South have both been guilty, and
they that sin must suffer."

Also, in harmony with the above sentiments, came a number of verses
appropriate to her desires in this respect, one of which we here give as
a sample: