house to house, and from store to store, presenting her plea so touchingly that few could refuse her.  Many barrels of clothing were in this way gathered, and she often returned home staggering beneath the weight of bundles she had carried perhaps for a mile.  She also wrote to friends at a distance, on whose generosity she felt she could depend, and collected from them a considerable sum of money, which, went far to keep the suffering from starvation until new crops could be gathered.  Writing to Sarah Douglass, she says:—­

“I have been so happy this winter, going about to beg old clothing for the unfortunate freedmen in Florida.  I have sent off several barrels of clothes already.  Alas! there is no Christ to multiply the garments, and what are those I send among so many?  I think of these destitute ones night and day, and feel so glad to help them even a little.”

This happiness in helping others was the secret of Sarah Grimke’s unvarying contentment, and there was always some one needing the help she was so ready to give, some one whose trials made her feel, she says, ashamed to think of her own.  But the infirmities of old age were creeping upon her, and though her mental faculties remained as bright as ever, she began to complain of her eyes and her hearing.  In August, 1872, she writes to a friend:—­

“My strength is failing.  I cannot do a tithe of the walking I used to do, and am really almost good for nothing.  But I don’t know but I may learn to enjoy doing nothing; and if it is needful, I shall be thankful, as that has always appeared to me a great trial.”

Notwithstanding this representation, however, she was seldom idle a moment.  She was an untiring knitter, and made quite a traffic of the tidies, cushion-covers, and other fancy articles she knitted and netted.  These were purchased by her friends, and the proceeds given to the poor.  Soon after she had penned the above quoted paragraph, too, she copied for the Rev. Henry Giles, the once successful Unitarian preacher, a lecture of sixty-five pages, from which he hoped to make some money.  His eyesight had failed, and his means were too narrow to permit of his paying a copyist.  She also managed to keep up more or less, as her strength permitted, her usual visits to the poor and afflicted; and during the hot summer of 1872 she and Angelina went daily to read to an old, bed-ridden lady, who was dying of cancer, and living almost alone.  During the following winter Sarah’s strength continued to fail, and she had several fainting spells, of which, however, she was kept in ignorance.  But as life’s pulse beat less vigorously, her heart seemed to grow warmer, and her interest in all that concerned her friends rather to increase than to lessen.  She still wrote occasional short letters, and enjoyed nothing so much as those she received, especially from young correspondents.  In January, 1873, she writes to an old friend:—­