“Such devotion and confidence are rare even among women.  There are many who would have searched a year, some who would have waited five years, a few who might have hoped ten years; but for twenty-five years this woman has retained her affection for and her faith in a man she has not seen or heard of in all that time.

“She came to me to-day in the hope that I might be able to help her find this long-lost husband.  And when she was gone I gave my fancy rein, and imagined a case I will put to you.

“Suppose that this husband, soon after his escape, had learned that his wife had been sold away, and that such inquiries as he could make brought no information of her whereabouts.  Suppose that he was young, and she much older than he; that he was light, and she was black; that their marriage was a slave marriage, and legally binding only if they chose to make it so after the war.  Suppose, too, that he made his way to the North, as some of us have done, and there, where he had larger opportunities, had improved them, and had in the course of all these years grown to be as different from the ignorant boy who ran away from fear of slavery as the day is from the night.  Suppose, even, that he had qualified himself, by industry, by thrift, and by study, to win the friendship and be considered worthy the society of such people as these I see around me to-night, gracing my board and filling my heart with gladness; for I am old enough to remember the day when such a gathering would not have been possible in this land.  Suppose, too, that, as the years went by, this man’s memory of the past grew more and more indistinct, until at last it was rarely, except in his dreams, that any image of this bygone period rose before his mind.  And then suppose that accident should bring to his knowledge the fact that the wife of his youth, the wife he had left behind him,—­not one who had walked by his side and kept pace with him in his upward struggle, but one upon whom advancing years and a laborious life had set their mark,—­was alive and seeking him, but that he was absolutely safe from recognition or discovery, unless he chose to reveal himself.  My friends, what would the man do?  I will presume that he was one who loved honor, and tried to deal justly with all men.  I will even carry the case further, and suppose that perhaps he had set his heart upon another, whom he had hoped to call his own.  What would he do, or rather what ought he to do, in such a crisis of a lifetime?

“It seemed to me that he might hesitate, and I imagined that I was an old friend, a near friend, and that he had come to me for advice; and I argued the case with him.  I tried to discuss it impartially.  After we had looked upon the matter from every point of view, I said to him, in words that we all know:——­

 “’This above all:  to thine own self be true,
   And it must follow, as the night the day,
   Thou canst not then be false to any man.’