have at her age, she had almost none.  We had talked of these daily occurring tragedies until they had lost both their terror and their novelty.  These certainly were not fitting surroundings for a little girl, intelligent and thoughtful beyond her years, and of an unduly sensitive and nervous organization.  But she was her mother’s only girl, this was our only home, and, coming out of the furnace fires of such a life, we could not think it strange that she should feel the need of a Heavenly Father in whom she could trust, of $ Savior’s arm on which she could lean, and of a home in the church where she could find help and sympathy.

One thought was ever present in my heart, how far could brethren co-operate together who had been on opposite sides?  To learn what could be done I made the acquaintance of brethren everywhere.  The brilliant and erratic Dr. Cox, of Missouri, had sent an appointment to “Old Union,” and Oliver Steele came with him.  I attended his meeting, and Bro.  Steele, Cox and myself accepted the hospitality of Bro.  Humber.  Bro.  Cox, being now in the presence of a man reported to be a live Abolitionist, opened a discussion on the question of slavery.

I had been brought up on the Western Reserve, Ohio, and inherited intense anti-slavery convictions.  But I had learned from the writings of A. Campbell to judge slave-holders with a charitable judgment.  They had inherited the institution of slavery from their fathers, and like the aristocratic institutions of the old world, it had come down to them without any fault of their own.  My experiences in Kansas certainly had not made me love slavery any better; still, all this, how bitter soever it might be to me, had revealed so much of real nobility in the hearts of many slave-holders that it had not impaired my feeling of good will to them.  If I were to grant that they had been associated sometimes with men of desperate morals, had I not also been associated with Jim Lane, and had I not been compelled to hide myself behind the old maxims, that “Politics, like poverty, makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows?”

And so I argued with Bro.  Cox the views I held, stoutly asserting them, when, for a wonder to him, Bro.  Steele and Bro.  Humber expressed themselves as coinciding with my views much more than with the views of Bro.  Cox, who held the ultra Southern, John C. Calhoun theory of slavery.  It appeared that these brethren held that if Providence has given to the Caucasian descendants of Japheth, a fairer skin, a higher style of intellectual power, and greater force of will, that the same divine Providence has given to the sons of Ham a darker color to their skin; but that all are alike the children of the love of one common Father; that Jesus died for all, and that he will not suffer with impunity any indignity to be offered even to one of the least of these his brethren.  To the inquiry why these brethren did not give that freedom to their colored servants which they asserted