as might be expected from the friction of such minds.  Seldom, if ever, in the famous salons of Europe were better things said or higher topics treated than in the Eagleswood parlors.  All the rights and wrongs of humanity received here earnest consideration; while questions of general interest, politics, religion, the arts and sciences, even the last new novel or poem, had each its turn.  Thoreau, also, spent many days at Eagleswood, and spoke often to the pupils; and A. Bronson Alcott gave them a series of his familiar lectures.

Here, on Sundays, Theodore D. Weld delivered lay sermons, so full of divine light and love, of precious lessons of contempt for all littleness, of patience with the weaknesses of our fellow-men, that few could listen without being inspired with higher and holier purposes in life.

Here James G. Birney died, in 1857, and was buried in the beautiful little cemetery on the crest of the hill.

Here were brought and interred the bodies of Stevens and Hazlitt, two of John Brown’s mistaken but faithful apostles.

Here stirring lessons of patriotism were learned in 1860-61, and from this place went forth, at the first call, some of the truest defenders of the liberties of the nation.

At Eagleswood, Mr. Weld and his faithful wife and sister passed some of their most laborious as well as some of their most pleasant and satisfactory years.  They did not find the association all or even the half of what they had expected.  “We had indulged the delightful hope,” writes Sarah, “that Theodore would have no cares outside of the schoolroom, and Angelina would have leisure to pursue her studies and aid in the cause of woman.  Her heart is in it, and her talents qualify her for enlarged usefulness.  She was no more designed to serve tables than Theodore to dig potatoes.  But verily, to use a homely phrase, we have jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire in point of leisure, for there are innumerable sponges here to suck up every spare moment; but dear Nina is a miracle of hope, faith, and endurance.”

In the new school Angelina taught history, for which she was admirably qualified, while Sarah taught French, and was also book-keeper, both of which offices were distasteful to her because of her conscious incompetency.  She did herself great injustice, as the results of her work showed, but it required a great mental struggle to reconcile herself to it in the beginning.

“I am driven to it,” she says, “by a stern sense of duty.  I feel its responsibilities and my own insufficiency so deeply, that I never hear the school bell with pleasure, and seldom enter the schoolroom without a sinking of the heart, a dread as of some approaching catastrophe.  Oh, if I had only been developed into usefulness in early life, how much happier I should have been and would be now.  From want of training, I am all slip-shod, and all I do, whether learning or teaching, is done slip-shod fashion.  However, I must try and use the fag-end of me that is left, to the most advantage.”