reputation of co-adjutors; not one who rewarded adherents with flattery and hurled invectives at dissentients; not one to whom personal flattery was acceptable or personal prominence desirable; not one whose writings betrayed egotism, self-inflation or bombast.  Such was their honest aversion to personal publicity, it is now almost impossible to trace the work each did.  Some of their noblest arguments for Freedom were published anonymously.  They made no vainglorious claims to the original authorship of ideas.  But never in the history of reform was work better done than the old American Anti-Slavery Society did from its formation in 1833 to its disruption in 1840.  In less than seven years it regained for Freedom most of the vantage-ground lost under the open assaults and secret plottings, beginning in 1829, of the Jackson administration, and in the panic caused by the Southampton insurrection; blew into flame the embers of the national anti-slavery sentiment; painted slavery as it was; vindicated the anti-slavery character of the Constitution and the Bible; defended the right of petition; laid bare the causes of the Seminole war:  exposed the Texas conspiracy and the designs of the slave power for supremacy; and freed the legitimate abolition cause from “no human government,” secession, and anti-constitution heresies.  In short, it planted the seed which flowered and fruited in a political party, around which the nation was to gather for defence against the aggressions of the slave power.

At the anti-slavery office in New York, Angelina and Sarah learned, much to their satisfaction, that the work that would probably be required of Angelina could be done in a private capacity; that it was proposed to organize, the next month (November), a National Female Anti-Slavery Society, for which women agents would be needed, and they could make themselves exceedingly useful travelling about, distributing tracts, and talking to women in their own homes.

There the matter rested for a time.

Writing to her friend Jane Smith in Philadelphia after their return to Shrewsbury, Angelina says:—­

“I am certain of the disapproval of nearly all my friends.  As to dear Catherine, I am afraid she will hardly want to see me again.  I wrote to her all about it, for I wanted her to know what my prospects were.  I expect nothing less than the loss of her friendship and of my membership in the Society.  The latter will be a far less trial than the former....  I cannot describe to thee how my dear sister has comforted and strengthened me.  I cannot regard the change in her feelings as any other than as a strong evidence that my Heavenly Father has called me into the anti-slavery field, and after having tried my faith by her opposition, is now pleased to strengthen and confirm it by her approbation.”

In a postscript to this letter, Sarah says:—­

“God does not willingly grieve or afflict the children of men, and if my suffering or even my beloved sister’s, which is harder to bear than my own, can help forward the cause of Truth and Righteousness, I may rejoice in that we are found worthy not only to believe on, but also to suffer for, the name of Jesus.”