whom she had been grievously estranged.  She prayed that she might not do or say anything to alienate them further from her; but when she fully realized, as she had never yet done, the sad condition of things, she could not keep silent.  She felt it her duty to speak, and she did so, kindly and affectionately, but unsparingly.  She relates many incidents proving this, and showing also how badly her reproofs were received.  The mistake she made, and which in after years she freely acknowledged, was in excess of zeal.  But Angelina was a born radical, and if a thing was wrong, it was wrong, and she could not see why it should not be righted at once.  Temporizing with a wrong, or compromising with it in any way, were things outside of her reasoning, and she never would admit that they were justifiable under any circumstances.  It was, of course, difficult to apply this principle in the desired reform of her mother’s inherited and life-long prejudices.  Hence the incessant chafing and irritation which daily made Angelina feel more keenly her isolated position, and caused her to turn with increasing longing to the North, where her beloved sister and many dear friends were in sympathy with her.

To illustrate what I have said, one or two examples will be sufficient.  She was much troubled because her mother had the drawing-room repainted and handsomely papered.  Mrs. Grimke doubtless selected a paper in harmony with the house and furniture, and had no suspicion that she was thereby committing a sin.  But Angelina thought it entirely too fine, and felt that she could never sit in the room.  When the work was at last finished, and some friends were invited to tea, and afterwards repaired to the newly-decorated apartment, Angelina did not accompany them, but remained below, reading alone, much disturbed during the evening by the talking and laughing up stairs.  Her mother did not notice her absence, or ascribed it to some other cause; but Angelina explained it to her some time afterwards, when, she says, a way seemed to open for it.

“I spoke to her of how great a trial it was to me to see her living in the luxury she did, and explained to her that it was not, as she seemed to think, because I did not wish to see brother John and sister Sally that I was tried at their dining here every week, but it was the parade and profusion which was displayed when they came.  I spoke also of the drawing-room, and remarked it was as much my feeling about that which had prevented my coming into the room when M.A. and others drank tea here, as my objection to fashionable company.  She said it was very hard that she could not give her children what food she chose, or have a room papered, without being found fault with; that, indeed, she was weary of being continually blamed about everything she did, and she wished she could be let alone, for she saw no sin in these things.  ’I trust,’ I said, ’that I do not speak to thee, mother, in the spirit thou art now speaking to me; nothing