“She spoke for nearly an hour and a half, her subject being ’The Mission of the War, and the Demands of the Colored Race in the Work of Reconstruction;’ and we have seldom seen an audience more attentive, better pleased, or more enthusiastic.  Mrs. Harper has a splendid articulation, uses chaste, pure language, has a pleasant voice, and allows no one to tire of hearing her.  We shall attempt no abstract of her address; none that we could make would do her justice.  It was one of which any lecturer might feel proud, and her reception by a Portland audience was all that could be desired.  We have seen no praises of her that were overdrawn.  We have heard Miss Dickinson, and do not hesitate to award the palm to her darker colored sister.”

In 1856, desiring to see the fugitives in Canada, she visited the Upper Province, and in a letter dated at Niagara Falls, Sept. 12th, she unfolded her mind in the following language: 

“Well, I have gazed for the first time upon Free Land, and, would you believe it, tears sprang to my eyes, and I wept.  Oh, it was a glorious sight to gaze for the first time on a land where a poor slave flying from our glorious land of liberty would in a moment find his fetters broken, his shackles loosed, and whatever he was in the land of Washington, beneath the shadow of Bunker Hill Monument or even Plymouth Rock, here he becomes a man and a brother.  I have gazed on Harper’s Ferry, or rather the rock at the Ferry; I have seen it towering up in simple grandeur, with the gentle Potomac gliding peacefully at its feet, and felt that that was God’s masonry, and my soul had expanded in gazing on its sublimity.  I have seen the ocean singing its wild chorus of sounding waves, and ecstacy has thrilled upon the living chords of my heart.  I have since then seen the rainbow-crowned Niagara chanting the choral hymn of Omnipotence, girdled with grandeur, and robed with glory; but none of these things have melted me as the first sight of Free Land.  Towering mountains lifting their hoary summits to catch the first faint flush of day when the sunbeams kiss the shadows from morning’s drowsy face may expand and exalt your soul.  The first view of the ocean may fill you with strange delight.  Niagara—­the great, the glorious Niagara—­may hush your spirit with its ceaseless thunder; it may charm you with its robe of crested spray and rainbow crown; but the land of Freedom was a lesson of deeper significance than foaming waves or towering mounts.”

While in Toronto she lectured, and was listened to with great interest; but she made only a brief visit, thence returning to Philadelphia, her adopted home.