securing a number of distinguished speakers.  In writing her, relative to this meeting, Frederick Douglass said:  “I rejoice not in the death of any one, yet I can not but feel that, in the death of Stephen A. Douglas, a most dangerous person has been removed.  No man of his time has done more than he to intensify hatred of the negro and to demoralize northern sentiment.  Since Henry Clay he has been the King of Compromise.  Yours for the freedom of man and of woman always.”

[Autograph:  Frederick Douglass]

From her diary may be obtained an idea of the busy life which only allowed the briefest entries, but these show her restlessness and dissatisfaction: 

Tried to interest myself in a sewing society; but little intelligence among them....  Attended Progressive Friends’ meeting; too much namby-pamby-ism....  Went to colored church to hear Douglass.  He seems without solid basis.  Speaks only popular truths....  Quilted all day, but sewing seems to be no longer my calling....  I stained and varnished the library bookcase today, and superintended the plowing of the orchard....  The last load of hay is in the barn; all in capital order.  Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of Harriet Tubman....  The teachers’ convention was small and dull.  The woman’s committee failed to report.  I am mortified to death for them....  Washed every window in the house today.  Put a quilted petticoat in the frame.  Commenced Mrs. Browning’s Portuguese Sonnets.  Have just finished Casa Guidi Windows, a grand poem and so fitting to our terrible struggle....  I wish the government would move quickly, proclaim freedom to every slave and call on every able-bodied negro to enlist in the Union army.  How not to do it seems the whole study at Washington.  Good, stiff-backed Union Democrats would dare to move; they would have nothing to lose and all to gain for their party.  The present incumbents have all to lose; hence dare not avow any policy, but only wait.  To forever blot out slavery is the only possible compensation for this merciless war.

All through the chroniclings of the monotonous daily life is the cry:  “The all-alone feeling will creep over me.  It is such a fast after the feast of great presences to which I have been so long accustomed.”  During these days she reads Adam Bede, and thus writes Mrs. Stanton: 

I finished Adam Bede yesterday noon.  I can not throw off the palsied oppression of its finale to poor, poor Hetty—­and Arthur almost equally commands my sympathy.  He no more desired to wrong her or cause her one hour of sorrow than did Adam, but the impulse of his nature brooked no restraint.  Should public sentiment tolerate such a consummation of love—­or passion, if it were not love? (But I believe it was, only the impassable barrier of caste forbade its public avowal.) If such a birth could be left free from odium and scorn, contempt and pity from the world, it would be a thousand times more holy,