cause of Abolition better than their own ease, and they came in
ever-increasing numbers. Amongst them were several of Brown's
upgrown sons, followed by their father, ready to settle in this
new State, where they might turn the tide of public opinion in
favour of Freedom.

Thus slowly the ranks of the righteous lovers of liberty were
replenished, and they began to form into bands for mutual
protection, farming and soldiering by turns as necessity
dictated.

Some of John Brown's Northern friends, who knew the stuff of
which he was made, and saw that if Freedom had no blow struck on
her behalf she would be driven by outrage-mongers out of Kansas,
equipped him with money and rifles, or, as they had come to be
called, 'Beecher Bibles'--a tribute to Henry Ward Beecher's
ardent championship of advanced views upon the slavery question.

On October 6, 1855, he arrived at Osawatomie, and we find him
writing cheery words to his brave second wife and their family
whom he had left, telling them to hope in God and comfort one
another, humbly trusting they may meet again on God's earth, and
if not--for his vow is 'to the death'--that they may meet in
God's heaven. Of that second wife--heroine in obscurity, sharer
of the oath which ever knit the household in one, mother of
thirteen children--we might say much, but her spirit breathes in
these words she speaks concerning her solitary days:

'That was the time in my life when all my religion, all my
philosophy, and all my faith in God's goodness were put to the