“Night. This morning I had a very satisfactory conversation with dear mother, and feel considerably relieved from painful exercise.  I found her views far more correct than I had supposed, and I do believe that, through suffering, the great work will yet be accomplished.  She remarked that, though she had found it very hard to bear many things which sister and I had from time to time said to her, yet she believed that the Lord had raised us up to teach her, and that her fervent prayer was that, if we were right and she was wrong, she might see it.  I remarked that if she was willing, she would, I was sure, see still more than she now did; and I drew a contrast between what she once approved and now believed right.  ‘Yes,’ she said, ’I see very differently; for when I look back and remember what I used to do, and think nothing of it, I shrink back with horror.  Much more passed, and we parted in love.”

Two weeks later Angelina left Charleston, never to return.  The description of the parting with her mother is very affecting, but we have not room for it here.  It shows, however, that Mrs. Grimke had the true heart of a mother, and loved her daughter most tenderly.  She shed bitter tears as she folded her to her bosom for the last time, murmuring amid her sobs:  “Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away also!” The mother and daughter never saw each other again.

CHAPTER VIII.

Angelina arrived in Philadelphia in the latter part of October, 1829, and made her home with Sarah in the family of Catherine Morris.

Over the next four or five years I must pass very briefly, although they were marked by many interesting incidents and some deep sorrows, and much that the sisters wrote during that time I would like to notice, if space permitted.

We see Sarah still regarding herself as the vilest of sinners, against whom it seemed at times as if every door of mercy was closed, and still haunted by her horror of horrors, the ministry.  Her preparation continued, but brought her apparently no nearer the long-expected and dreaded end.  She was still unrecognized by the Church.  First-day meetings were looked forward to without pleasure, while the Quarterly and Yearly meetings were seasons of actual suffering.  Of one of the latter she says,—­

“I think no criminal under sentence of death can look more fearfully to the day of execution than I do towards our Yearly Meeting.”

Still she would nerve herself from time to time to arise when the Spirit moved her, and say a few words, but deriving no satisfaction from the exercise, except that of obedience to the divine will.