a fool of me. Helen's beauty ruined Troy. Cleopatra was a wretch. So if
you are pretty, _I_ will be master, remember that."



CHAPTER VI.


JOIN CHURCH AND MAKE NEW ENDEAVORS TO KEEP SABBATH.--AGE, 15.

In the year 1800, the Covenanter church of this country said in her
synod: "Slavery and Christianity are incompatible," and never relaxed
her discipline which forbade fellowship with slave-holders--so I was
brought up an abolitionist. I was still a child when I went through
Wilkins' township collecting names to a petition for the abolition of
slavery in the District of Columbia. Here, in a strictly orthodox
Presbyterian community, I was everywhere met by the objections: "Niggers
have no souls," "The Jews held slaves," "Noah cursed Canaan," and these
points I argued from house to house, occasionally for three years, and
made that acquaintance which led to my being sent for in cases of
sickness and death, before I had completed my sixteenth year. In this, I
in some measure took the place long filled by mother, who was often a
substitute for doctor and preacher.

Looking back at her life, I think how little those know of Calvinists
who regard them merely as a class of autocrats, conscious of their own
election to glory, and rejoicing in the reprobation of all others; for I
have never known such humble, self-distrustful people as I have found in
that faith. Mother, whose life was full of wisdom and good works,
doubted, even to the last, her own acceptance with God. She and I