ker meeting this was especially humiliating, as it
was placed either directly under the stairs, or off in a corner, was
called the "negro seat," and was regularly guarded to prevent either
colored people from passing beyond it, or white people from making a
mistake and occupying it. Two years later, Sarah and Angelina both
denounced it; but before that, though they may have privately deplored
it, they seem to have accepted it as a necessary conformity to the
existing feeling against the blacks.

The decision of Friends' Society concerning discussion Sarah Grimke
seems to have accepted, for, as we have said, there is no expression of
her views on emancipation in letters or diary. But Angelina felt that
her obligations to humanity were greater than her obligations to the
Society of Friends; and as she listened to the eloquent speeches of
George Thompson and others, her life-long interest in the slave was
stimulated, and it aroused in her a desire to work for him in some way,
to do something that would practically help his cause.

On one of several loose leaves of a diary which Angelina kept at this
time, we find the following under date, "5th Mo. 12th, 1835: Five
months have elapsed since I wrote in this diary, since which time I
have become deeply interested in the subject of abolition. I had long
regarded this cause as utterly hopeless, but since I have examined
anti-slavery principles, I find them so full of the power of truth,
that I am confident not many years will roll by before the horrible
traffic in human beings will be destroyed in this land of Gospel
privileges. My soul has measurably stood in the stead of the poor
slave, and my earnest prayers have been poured out that the Lord would
be pleased to permit me to be instrumental of good to these degraded,
oppressed, and suffering fellow-creatures. Truly, I often feel ready to
go to prison or to death in this cause of justice, mercy, and love; and
I do fully believe if I am called to return to Carolina, it will not be
long before I shall suffer persecution of some kind or other."

Her fast-increasing enthusiasm alarmed her cautious sister, and drew
from her frequent and serious remonstrances. But that she also
travelled rapidly towards the final rending of the bonds which had
hitherto held her, we find from a letter to Sarah Douglass, written in
the spring of 1835. Speaking of Jay's book of Colonization, which had
just appeared, she says:--

"The work is writt