of New York;
Preston, of South Carolina; Benton, of Missouri; Linn, of Missouri,
more remarkable for personal beauty than talents. In the House Mr.
Adams was then a chief figure. His contest over the right of petition
had commended him to one portion of the country, and made him the
object of hostility to another portion. I recall one Monday, when he
had the right to present petitions, and although they were laid on the
table without debate he was able to consume time by presenting them
singly. As the supply in his hands and on the table seemed
inexhaustible, a compromise was made finally, and the petitions went in
in a mass. Of other speakers that I heard I recall Henry A. Wise, and
Sergeant S. Prentiss. Of their style and quality I can say nothing.
The reported speeches of Prentiss do not justify the reputation that he
enjoyed as an orator when living.

The incident which produced the most lasting impression upon me, when
in Washington, was an interview with a slave, a woman fifty years or
more of age. I had then no love for the system of slavery. I had read
Clarkson's and Wilberforce's writings, and I knew the history of the
struggle in England for the abolition of the slave trade, and slavery
in the British West Indies. I had also attended some anti-slavery
meetings in Massachusetts, at which the leaders, Phillips, Garrison,
Foster, Parker, and Pillsbury had denounced the institution. Groton
was a center of anti-slavery operations in that part of the State.
Several copies of the _Liberator_ were taken in the town, and anti-
slavery meetings were held not infrequently. The first speech that
George Thompson made in America was made in Groton.

One Sunday morning I walked out towards what is now called the Island.
The road was marked by a rail fence, but of buildings there were none.
I went so far that I was near the slave pen, a building now standing
and which I have visited within a few years. It was of brick, enclosed
within a brick wall, and all of a dingy straw color. At a short
distance from the building, I met a black woman walking slowly away
from it. I said to her: "What building is that?" At once she was in
tears, and she said: "That is the pen where the poor black people are
kept who are going down to Louisiana." She had then been to visit her
daughter, a girl of about eighteen years of age, according to the
mother's statement, who was to leave the next morning. She was the
last of a fa