Its numbers were small, and it was everywhere spoken
against. It was at this time that Lydia Maria Child startled the country
by the publication of her noble _Appeal in Behalf of that Class of
Americans called Africans_. It is quite impossible for any one of the
present generation to imagine the popular surprise and indignation which
the book called forth, or how entirely its author cut herself off from
the favor and sympathy of a large number of those who had previously
delighted to do her honor. Social and literary circles, which had been
proud of her presence, closed their doors against her. The sale of her
books, the subscriptions to her magazine, fell off to a ruinous extent.
She knew all she was hazarding, and made the great sacrifice, prepared
for all the consequences which followed. In the preface to her book she
says, "I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I have
undertaken; but though I expect ridicule and censure, I do not fear them.
A few years hence, the opinion of the world will be a matter in which I
have not even the most transient interest; but this book will be abroad
on its mission of humanity long after the hand that wrote it is mingling
with the dust. Should it be the means of advancing, even one single
hour, the inevitable progress of truth and justice, I would not exchange
the consciousness for all Rothschild's wealth or Sir Walter's fame."

Thenceforth her life was a battle; a constant rowing hard against the
stream of popular prejudice and hatred. And through it all--pecuniary
privation, loss of friends and position, the painfulness of being
suddenly thrust from "the still air of delightful studies" into the
bitterest and sternest controversy of the age--she bore herself with
patience, fortitude, and unshaken reliance upon the justice and ultimate
triumph of the cause she had espoused. Her pen was never idle. Wherever
there was a brave word to be spoken, her voice was heard, and never
without effect. It is not exaggeration to say that no man or woman at
that period rendered more substantial service to the cause of freedom, or
made such a "great renunciation" in doing it.

A practical philanthropist, she had the courage of her convictions, and
from the first was no mere closet moralist or sentimental bewailer of the
woes of humanity. She was the Samaritan stooping over the wounded Jew.
She calmly and unflinchingly took her place by the side, of the despised
slave and free m