nsylvania
woman had ever broken out of woman's sphere. All lived in the very
centre of that sacred enclosure, making fires by which, husbands,
brothers and sons sat reading the news; each one knowing that she had a
soul, because the preacher who made his bread and butter by saving it
had been careful to inform her of its existence as preliminary to her
knowledge of the indispensable nature of his services.

But the men whom I ridiculed and attacked knew the hand which, held the
mirror up to nature, and also knew they had a legal remedy, and that to
their fines and imprisonment I was as indifferent as to their opinions.
One of these, Hon. Gabriel Adams, had taken me by the hand at father's
funeral, led me to a stranger and introduced me as:

"The child I told you of, but eight years old, her father's nurse and
comforter."

He had smoothed my hair and told me not to cry; God would bless me for
being a good child. He was a member of the session when I joined church;
his voice in prayer had soothed mother's hard journey through the dark
valley; and now, as mayor of the city, had ordered its illumination in
honor of the battle of Buena Vista, and this, too, on Saturday evening,
when the unholy glorification extended into the Sabbath. Measured by the
standards of his profession as an elder in the church, whose highest
judicatory had pronounced slavery and Christianity incompatible; no one
was more valuable than he, and of none was I so unsparing, yet as I
wrote, the letter was blistered with tears; but his oft repeated comment
was:

"Jane is right," and he went out of his way to take my hand and say,
"You were right."

Samuel Black, a son of my pastor, dropped his place as leader of the
Pittsburg bar and rushed to the war. My comments were thought severe,
even for me, yet the first intimation I had that I had not been cast
aside as a monster, came from his sister, who sent me a message that her
father, her husband and herself, approved my criticism. Samuel returned
with a colonel's commission, and one day I was about to pass him without
recognition, where he stood on the pavement talking to two other
lawyers, when he stepped before me and held out his hand. I drew back,
and he said: "Is it possible you will not take my hand?"

I looked at it, then into his manly, handsome face, and answered:

"There is blood on it; the blood of women and children slain at their
own altars, on their own hearthstones, that you might spr