P.S.—­Elise and the curate are to be married, and the parish is to have a shepherdess.  Cecilia, Samayana, and I have no doubt of its being a love-match.  She never could marry him after seeing him in a salt-mine costume if she didn’t love him.  MARGERY DEANE.

ANTHONY CALVERT BROWN.

First, as my grandfather used to tell, there were the woods and the Oneida Indians and the Mohawks; then the forest was cleared away, and there was the broad, fertile, grassy, and entrancingly-beautiful Mohawk valley; then came villages and cities and my own unimportant existence, and at about the same time appeared the Oneida Institute.  This institution of learning is my first point.  The Oneida Institute, located in the village of Whitesboro, four miles from Utica, in the State of New York, consisted visibly of three elongated erections of painted, white-pine clapboards, with shingle roofs.  Each structure was three stories high and was dotted with lines of little windows.  There was a surrounding farm and gardens, in which the students labored, that might attract attention at certain hours of the day, when the laborers were at work in them; but the buildings were the noticeable feature.  Seated in the deep green of the vast meadows on the west bank of the willow-shaded Mohawk, these staring white edifices were very conspicuous.  The middle one was turned crosswise, as if to keep the other two, which were parallel, as far apart as possible.  This middle one was also crowned with a fancy cupola, whereby the general appearance of the group was just saved to a casual stranger from the certainty of its being the penitentiary or almshouse of the county.

The glory of this institution was not in its architecture or lands, but in that part which could not be seen by the bodily eyes.  For, spiritually speaking, Oneida Institute was an immense battering-ram, behind which Gerrit Smith, William Lloyd Garrison, and Rev. Beriah Green were constantly at work, pounding away to destroy the walls which slavery had built up to protect itself.

Mr. Green was president of the institute, and was the soul and heart and voice of its faculty.  His power to mould young men was phenomenal.  It was a common saying that he turned out graduates who were the perfect image of Beriah Green, except the wart.  The wart was a large one, which, being situated in the centre of Mr. Green’s forehead, seemed to be a part of his method to those who were magnetized by his personality or persuaded by his eloquence.

About 1845, when I began to be an observing boy, it was understood throughout Oneida County that Beriah Green was an intellectual giant, and that he would sell his life, if need be, to befriend the colored man.  Oneida Institute was a refuge for the oppressed, quite as much as a place where the students were magnetized and taught to weed onions.  Fifteen years before John Brown paused in his march to the gallows to kiss a negro baby I saw Beriah Green walk hand in hand along the sidewalk with a black man and fondle the hand he held conspicuously.  Among his intimates were Ward and Garnet, both very black, as well as very talented and very eloquent.