The proposal to her mother to sit in silence for a while with her every evening was in accordance with the Quaker practices.  She thought they would both find it profitable, and that it would be the means of forming a bond of union between them.  The mother’s assent to this was certainly an amiable concession to her daughter’s views, enhanced by the regularity with which she kept the appointment, although the dark, silent room must have been at times a trifle wearisome.  Angelina always sat on a low seat beside her, with her head in her mother’s lap, and very rarely was the silence broken.  The practice was kept up until the mosquitoes obliged them to discontinue it.  That it did not prove entirely satisfactory, we judge from several entries in the diary like the following:—­

“I still sit in silence with dear mother, but feel very sensibly that she takes no interest at all in it; still, I do not like to relinquish the habit, believing it may yet be blessed.  Eliza came this evening, as she has several times before.  It was a season of great deadness, and yet I am glad to sit even thus, for where there is communion there will be some union.”

Her position was certainly a difficult and a painful one; for, apart from other troubles, her eyes were now fully open to all the iniquities of the slave system, and she could neither stay in nor go out without having some of its miserable features forced upon her notice.  In the view of her after-work, it is interesting to note the beginning of her strong feelings on the subject, as well as her faithful crusades against it in her own family.  In April, 1829, she writes as follows in her diary:—­

“Whilst returning from meeting this morning, I saw before me a colored woman who in much distress was vindicating herself to two white boys, one about eighteen, the other fifteen, who walked on each side of her.  The dreadful apprehension that they were leading her to the workhouse crossed my mind, and I would have avoided her if I could.  As I approached, the younger said to her, ‘I will have you tied up.’  My knees smote together, and my heart sank within me.  As I passed them, she exclaimed, ‘Missis!’ But I felt all I had to do was to suffer the pain of seeing her.  My lips were sealed, and my soul earnestly craved a willingness to bear the exercise which was laid on me.  How long, O Lord, how long wilt thou suffer the foot of the oppressor to stand on the neck of the slave!  None but those who know from experience what it is to live in a land of bondage can form any idea of what is endured by those whose eyes are open to the enormities of slavery, and whose hearts are tender enough to feel for these miserable creatures.  For two or three months after my return here it seemed to me that all the cruelty and unkindness which I had from my infancy seen practised towards them came back to my mind as though it was only yesterday.  And as to the house of correction, it seemed as though its