“What the effect of these meetings is to be, I know not, nor do I feel that I have anything to do with it.  This I know, that the chairman was in tears almost the whole time I was speaking,” and she adds:  “We abolition women are turning the world upside down, for during the whole meeting there was sister seated up in the Speaker’s chair of state.”

These meetings were followed by the six evening lectures at the Odeon, to which reference has already been made.  Sarah delivered the first lecture, taking for her subject the history of the country in reference to slavery.  She spoke for two hours, fearlessly, as she always did, and though she says Garrison told her he trembled with apprehension, the audience of fifteen hundred people listened respectfully and attentively, frequently applauding the utterance of some strongly expressed truth, and showing no excitement even under the rebukes she administered to Edward Everett, then Governor of Massachusetts, for his speech in Congress in 1826, and to ex-Governor Lincoln for his in 1831.  Both these worthies had declared their willingness to go down South to suppress servile insurrection.

This was the last time Sarah spoke in public.  Her throat, which had long troubled her, was now seriously affected, and entire rest was prescribed.  She did not murmur, for she had increasingly felt that Angelina’s speaking was more effective than hers, and now she believed the Lord was showing her that this part of the work must be left to her more gifted sister, and she gladly yielded to her the task of delivering the five succeeding lectures.  In relation to these lectures, the son of Samuel Philbrick has kindly sent me the following extract from a diary kept by his father.  Under date of April 23, 1838, he says:—­

“In February Angelina addressed the committee of our legislature on the subject of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia and Florida, and the inter-state slave trade, during three sittings of two hours each, in the Representatives’ Hall in Boston, before a crowded audience, stowed as close as they could stand in every aisle and corner.  Her addresses were listened to with profound attention and respect, without interruption to the last.  More than five hundred people could not get seats, but stood quietly during two full hours, in profound silence.

“During the last few weeks she has delivered five lectures, and Sarah one at the Odeon, before an assembly of men and women from all parts of the city.  Every part of the building was crowded, every aisle filled.  Estimated number, two thousand to three thousand at each meeting.  There was great attention and silence, and the addresses were intensely interesting.”

These over, the sisters bade farewell to their most excellent Brookline friends, in whose family they had so peacefully rested for six months, and returned to Philadelphia, Sarah accepting a temporary home with Jane Smith, while Angelina went to stay with Mrs. Frost, at whose house two weeks later, that is on the 14th of May, she was united in marriage to Theodore D. Weld.