The Grimké Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimké: the First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights by Catherine H. Birney
page 53 of 312 (16%)
page 53 of 312 (16%)
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with the shreds thereof concluded to stuff this cushion. Having made
known her intention, she solicited contributions from all the family, which they furnished liberally, and several of them having relinquished the vanities of the world to seek a better inheritance, they threw into the treasury much which they had once used to decorate the poor tabernacle of clay. Now it happened that on the 10th day of the first month that, sitting at her work and industriously cutting her scraps, her well-beloved sister Angelina proposed adding to the collection for the cushion two handsome lace veils, a lace flounce, and other laces, etc., which were accepted, and are accordingly in this medley. This has been done under feelings of duty, believing that, as we are called with a high and holy calling, and forbidden to adorn these bodies, but to wear the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, as we have ourselves laid aside these superfluities of naughtiness, so we should not in any measure contribute to the destroying of others, knowing that we shall be called to give an account of the deeds done in the body." This was at least consistent, and in this light cannot be condemned. From that time Angelina kept up this kind of sacrifices, which were gladly made, and for which she seems to have found ample compensation in her satisfied sense of duty. One day she records: "I have just untrimmed my hat, and have put nothing but a band of ribbon around it, and taken the lace out of the inside. I do want, if I _am_ a Christian, to look like one. I think that professors of religion ought so to dress that wherever they are seen all around may feel they are _condemning_ the world and all its trifling vanities." A little later, she writes: "My attention has lately been called to the |
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