For one reason or another,—­perhaps to let a hot pursuit go by; perhaps to allow opportunity for recovering from fatigue and recruiting exhausted strength, or for earning means to pursue the journey by the common railroads,—­it was often thought advisable that passengers should remain with them for a considerable period; and numbers of these were, at different times, employed as laborers in some capacity.  Grace Anna testifies that some of the best assistants they ever had in the house or on the farm, were these escaped slaves; that in general they were thrifty and economical, one man, for instance, who spent several years with them, having accumulated five hundred dollars before he went on to Canada; and another, enough to furnish an old coat with a full set of buttons, each of which was a golden half-eagle, covered with cloth, and firmly sewed on, besides an ample supply of good clothing for himself and his wife; and that, almost without exception, they were honest and loyal to their benefactors, and only too happy to find opportunities of showing their gratitude.  One man sent back to the sisters a letter of thanks, through a gentleman in England, whither he had gone.  And once, when Grace Anna was passing an elegant mansion in Philadelphia, a colored woman rushed out upon her with such an impetuous demonstration of affection, joy, and thankfulness—­all thought of fitness of time and place swept away by the swell of strong emotion—­as might well have amused, or slightly astonished, the passers in the street, who knew not that in her arms the woman’s child had died.  But it is no marvel that to her the memory of that poor runaway slave-woman’s true affection is more than could have been the warmest welcome from her educated and refined mistress.

One case, of which the sisters for a time had charge, seems worthy of a somewhat more extended mention.  In the fall of 1855 a slave named Johnson, who, in fleeing from bondage, had come as far as Wilmington, thinking he saw his master on the train by which he was journeying northward, sprang from the car and hurt his foot severely.  The Kennett abolitionists having taken him in hand, and fearing that suspicious eyes were on him in their region, felt it necessary to send him onward without waiting for his wound to heal.  He was therefore taken to the Lewises, suffering very much in his removal, and arriving in a condition which required the most assiduous care.  For more than four months he remained with them, patient and gentle in his helplessness and suffering, and very thankful for the ministrations of kindness he received.  He was nursed as tenderly as if his own sisters had attended him, instead of strangers, and was so carefully concealed that the nearest neighbors knew not of his being with them.  Their cousin, Morris Fussell, who lived near, being a physician, they had not to depend for even medical advice upon the outside world.