We had known these friends for months, nay, for years.  They had also been students in Mc.  Grawville, but had subsequently married, and at the time of my December visit to Fulton were teachers of a School in Phillipsville,—­where, it may be proper here to say, was located the depot of the Fulton trains of cars.

Not only belonging to that class of persons, (rare in America, even among those who claim to be Abolitionists and Christians), persons who do not profess to believe merely, but really do believe in the doctrine of the “unity, equality, and brotherhood of the human race;” and who are willing to accord to others the exercise of rights which they claim for themselves; but, having also great purity of heart and purpose, Mr. and Mrs. Porter did not, as they could not, sympathise with those whose ideas of marriage, as evinced in their conversation respecting Miss King and myself, never ascended beyond the region of the material into that of the high, the holy and the spiritual.  Of all the families of Fulton and Phillipsville, this was the only one which publicly spoke approval of our course.  So that, therefore it will be expected, that while those true hearts were friendly to us, they were equally with ourselves targets at which our enemies might shoot.

I have introduced Mr. and Mrs. Porter at this point, because, at this point, their services to us commenced.  But for these faithful friends, Miss King would not have known whither to have fled when she found as she did, her own home becoming any other than a desirable habitation, owing to the growing opposition and bitter revilings of her step-mother, and the impertinent intermeddlings of others.

Thus far the opposition which Miss King had experienced, though disagreeable, had not become too much for the “utmost limit of human patience.”  Soon, however, a crisis occurred, in the arrival in Fulton, of the Rev. John B. King.  This gentleman’s visit was unexpected, and it is due to him to say, that he did not come on any errand connected with this subject; for until he arrived in Fulton, he did not know of the correspondence which had existed between his sister and myself.  Though unexpected, his visit as already intimated, was fraught with results, which in their immediate influence, were extremely sad and woeful.

Mr. King was a Reform preacher, and had even come from Washington, District of Columbia, where he had been residing for the last two years, to collect money to build a church which should exclude from membership those who held their fellow-men in bondage, and who would not admit the doctrines of the human brotherhood.  Just the man to assist us, one would have thought.  But it is easy to preach and to talk.  Who cannot do that?  It is easier still to feel—­this is humanity’s instinct—­for the wrongs and outrages inflicted upon our kind.  But to plant one’s feet rough-shod upon the neck and heels of a corrupt and controlling public sentiment, to cherish living faith in God, and, above all to crush the demon in one’s own soul,—­ah! this it is which only the great can do, who, only of men, can help the world onward up to heaven.