le just starting from infancy into a
life of self-dependence.

In writing from Columbiana and Demopolis, Alabama, about the first of
March, 1871, Mrs. Harper painted the state of affairs in her usually
graphic manner, and diligently was she endeavoring to inspire the people
with hope and encouragement.

"Oh, what a field there is here in this region! Let me give you
a short account of this week's work. Sunday I addressed a
Sunday-school in Taladega; on Monday afternoon a day-school. On
Monday I rode several miles to a meeting; addressed it, and came
back the same night. Got back about or after twelve o'clock. The
next day I had a meeting of women and addressed them, and then
lectured in the evening in the Court-House to both colored and
white. Last night I spoke again, about ten miles from where I am
now stopping, and returned the same night, and to-morrow evening
probably I shall speak again. I grow quite tired part of the
time. * * * And now let me give you an anecdote or two of
some of our new citizens. While in Taladega I was entertained
and well entertained, at the house of one of our new citizens.
He is living in the house of his former master. He is a
brick-maker by trade, and I rather think mason also. He was
worth to his owner, it was reckoned, fifteen hundred or about
that a year. He worked with him seven years; and in that seven
years he remembers receiving from him fifty cents. Now mark the
contrast! That man is now free, owns the home of his former
master, has I think more than sixty acres of land, and his
master is in the poor-house. I heard of another such case not
long since: A woman was cruelly treated once, or more than once.
She escaped and ran naked into town. The villain in whose clutch
she found herself was trying to drag her downward to his own low
level of impurity, and at last she fell. She was poorly fed, so
that she was tempted to sell her person. Even scraps thrown to
the dog she was hunger-bitten enough to aim for. Poor thing, was
there anything in the future for her? Had not hunger and cruelty
and prostitution done their work, and left her an entire wreck
for life? It seems not. Freedom came, and with it dawned a new
era upon that poor, overshadowed, and sin-darkened life. Freedom
brought opportunity for work and wages combined. She went to
work,