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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

I shall never forget the first time I ever saw and heard Lucretia Mott. It
was in the town of Lynn, Massachusetts. It was not in a magnificent hall,
where such as she seemed to belong, but in a little hall over Jonathan
Buffum's store, the only place then open, even in that so-called radical
anti-slavery town, for an anti-slavery meeting on Sunday. But in this day of small
things, the smallness of the place was no matter of complaint or murmuring.
It was a cause of rejoicing that any kind of place could be had for such a
purpose. But Jonathan Buffum's courage was equal to this and more.

The speaker was attired in the usual Quaker dress, free from startling
colors, plain, rich, elegant, and without superfluity—the very sight of her a
sermon. In a few moments after she began to speak, I saw before me no more
a woman, but a glorified presence, bearing a message of light and love from
the Infinite to a benighted and strangely wandering world, straying away
from the paths of truth and justice into the wilderness of pride and
selfishness, where peace is lost and true happiness is sought in vain. I heard Mrs.
Mott thus, when she was comparatively young. I often heard her afterwards,
sometimes in the solemn temple, and sometimes under the open sky, but
whenever and wherever I listened to her, my heart was always made better,
and my spirit raised by her words; and in speaking thus for myself I am sure
I am expressing the experience of thousands.

Kindred in spirit with Mrs. Mott was Lydia Maria Child. They both
exerted an influence with a class of the American people which neither
Garrison, Phillips, nor Gerrit Smith could reach. Sympathetic in her nature,
it was easy for her to "remember those in bonds as bound with them;" and
her "Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans," issued,
as it was, at an early stage in the anti-slavery conflict, was one of the most
effective agencies in arousing attention to the cruelty and injustice of slavery.
When with her husband, David Lee Child, she edited the National
Anti-Slavery Standard, that paper was made attractive to a broad circle of readers,
from the circumstance that each issue contained a "Letter from New York,"
written by her on some passing subject of the day, in which she always
managed to infuse a spirit of brotherly love and good will, with an abhorrence of
all that was unjust, selfish, and mean, and in this way won many hearts to
anti-slavery which else would have remained cold and indifferent.

Of Sarah and Angelina Grimké I knew but little personally. These brave
sisters from Charleston, South Carolina, had inherited slaves, but in their
conversion from Episcopacy to Quakerism, in 1828, became convinced that
they had no right to such inheritance. They emancipated their slaves and
came North and entered at once upon pioneer work in advancing the educa-

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