There is nothing said of the parting, even from Angelina, though we know it must have been a hard trial for Sarah to leave this young sister, just budding into womanhood, and surrounded by all the snares whose alluring influences she understood so well.  That she could consent to leave her thus is perhaps the strongest proof of her faith in the imperative nature of the summons to which she felt she was yielding obedience.

The exiles reached Philadelphia without accident in the latter part of May, 1821.  Lodgings were found for Mrs. Frost and her child, and Sarah went at once to the residence of her friend, Israel Morris.

CHAPTER III.

It is very much to be regretted that all of Sarah Grimke’s letters to Angelina, and to other members of her family at this time, were, at her own request, destroyed as received.  They would not only have afforded most interesting reading, but would have thrown light on much which, without them, is necessarily obscure.  Nor were there more than twenty-five or thirty of Angelina’s letters preserved, and they were written between the years 1826 and 1828.  We therefore have but little data by which to follow Sarah’s life during the five years succeeding her return to Philadelphia, and before she again went, to Charleston; or Angelina’s life at home, during the same period.  Sarah’s diary, frequently interrupted, continues to record her religious sorrows, for these followed her even into the peaceful home at “Greenhill Farm,” the name of Israel Morris’s place, where she was received and treated like a near and dear relative; and it was but natural and proper that she should be so accepted by the members of Mr. Morris’s family.  He was literally her only friend at the North.  Through his influence she had been brought into the Quaker religion, and encouraged to leave her mother and native land.  She was entirely unpractised in the ways of the world, and was besides in very narrow circumstances, her only available income being the interest on $10,000, the sum left by Judge Grimke to each of his children.  The estate had not yet been settled up.  Add to all this the virtue of hospitality, inculcated by the Quaker doctrine, and it seems perfectly natural that Sarah should accept the offer of her friend in the spirit in which it was made, and feel grateful to her Heavenly Father that such a refuge was provided for her.

The notes in her journal for that summer are rather meagre.  She attended meeting regularly, but made no formal application to be received into the Society of Friends.  It would hardly have been considered so soon; she must first go through a season of probation.  How hard this was is told in the lamentations and prayers which she confided to her diary.  The “fearful act of disobedience” of which she was guilty in Charleston lay as a heavy load on her spirit, troubling her thoughts by day and her dreams by night, until she says:  “At times I am almost led to believe I shall never know good any more.”