me in a
strange land. It is just such a home as I would desire were I to have a
choice, and I often ask why my restless heart is not quite happy in the
land of ease which has been assigned me, for I do believe I shall, in
after life, look back upon this winter as one of peculiar favor, a time
granted for the improvement of my mind and my heart."

Again: "Very often do I contrast the sweet, unbroken quiet of the home
I now enjoy with the uncongenial one I was taken from."

In one of her letters she asks: "Dearest, does our precious mother seem
to have any idea of leaving Carolina? Such seems to be the distressing
excitement there from various causes, that I think it cannot be quite
safe to remain there. What does brother Thomas think will be the issue
of the political contest? I find the fate of the poor Indians is now
inevitable."

Towards the close of the winter there are two paragraphs in her letters
which show that she did at least read the daily papers. In one she
asks: "Didst thou know that great efforts are making in the House of
Delegates in Virginia to abolish slavery?"

The other one is as follows:--

"Read the enclosed, and give it to brother Thomas from me. Do you know
how this subject has been agitated in the Virginia legislature?"

The question naturally arises: if a little, why not more? If she could
refer to the subject of the Virginia debates, why should she not in
some of her letters give expression to her own views, or answer some
expressions from Sarah? The _Quaker Society_, is the only answer we can
find; the Society whose rules and customs at that time tended to
repress individuality in its members, and independence of thought or
action; which forbade its young men and maidens to look admiringly on
any fair face or manly form not framed in a long-eared cap, or
surmounted by the regulation broad-brim; which did not accord to a
member the right even to publish a newspaper article, without having
first submitted it to a committee of its Solons.

From the beginning, the Quaker Church bore its testimony against the
abolition excitement. Most Friends were in favor of the Colonization
Society; the rest were gradualists. Their commercial interests were as
closely interwoven with those of the South as were the interests of any
other class of the Northern people, and it took them years to admit, if
not to discover, that there was any new light on the subject of human
rights.

"The mills of the gods