Chapter VIII (2)

It may be said here that, whatever sectarian feeling there may have been between these rival publications, it was not shared by the girls themselves, at least not by Lucy Larcom. She simply and naturally followed the lead of her pastor. After the “orthodox” magazine stopped, and Miss Curtis and Miss Farley took charge of _The Offering_, Lucy became one of the corps of writers; and many of her verses and essays, both grave and gay, can be found in its bound volumes. Her first contribution to Volume Third, “The River,” a poem, appeared in October, 1843. She wrote letters from “Looking Glass Prairie,” Illinois; and many of her “prose poems,” published afterwards as “Similitudes,” with several early poems, including a different version of “The Lady Arabella,” first appeared in _The Lowell Offering_.

Our friendship began when we were little girls in “pantalets,” when we were “doffers” together in the cotton-mill, and was continued to the end of her life. She also became my husband’s friend; and during his lifetime she was our frequent guest, and was always “Aunt Lucy” to our children. Mr. Robinson had great faith in her possibilities as a writer, and he published her verses in his newspaper long before they found admittance into the magazines.

It was through him, while he was the reader (or “stopper”) for _The Atlantic Monthly_, during Mr. Lowell’s editorship, that “The Rose Enthroned” was brought to the notice of the poet, and afterwards admitted into the pages of the magazine. In a letter to Mr. Robinson, Miss Larcom says of this poem: “‘The Rose Enthroned’ was written in 1860, and published in June, 1861, through your mediation, you know.”

I should be glad to quote freely from her letters, they are so full of friendship and of loving kindness, but must refrain, and give extracts from those only which relate to her personal history.

In a letter written to me at Concord, Mass., in 1857, she says:--

“I was very glad to hear from you, and was particularly interested in your account of the sewing-society [anti-slavery] at R. W. E----’s. Didn’t it seem funny to go a-gossiping to the house of the Seer? I don’t wonder at your expecting the parrot to talk ‘transcendentally.’ Did the tea and toast smack of Hymettus? and was there any apple-_sass_ from those veritable sops-o’-wine? Attic salt came in as a matter of course. Well, it’s a fine thing to be on visiting terms at Olympus. I should like to see the philosopher again. I don’t think I should be afraid of him now.... Sometimes I like philosophers, and sometimes I don’t. The thing is to _live_. Beautiful theories don’t make any of us do that, but the real breath of life from the Infinite Good, which every soul must have for itself, or, fool or philosopher, he is dead as a heap of sand.... I should like to see the hills where huckleberries grow, and the Pond. There never were hills so still and balmy as those.”...

During the war her letters breathe the spirit of “A Loyal Woman’s No!” and show, to one that can read between the lines, that she had a personal interest in saying _No_ to a lover who seemed to her to be disloyal to his country.

Although a strong abolitionist, and a believer in the political rights of man, regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” she did not see the justice of woman’s claim to equal rights with man. In answer to a letter asking for her help in the suffrage cause, written in 1870, she says:--

“You know I am way behind the times, am not even a ‘suffrage woman’ yet, though I haven’t the least objection to the rest of the women’s having it. Don’t you see, I’m constitutionally on the fence.... I hope your enthusiastic believers will succeed; and if the suffrage comes, as it will, I hope it will be a blessing to everybody. All the people I know and respect seem to be in the movement, and still ‘I don’t see it.’...

Later, in 1888, she writes:--

“I am for human rights for woman. I never did believe in man’s claim to dictate to her. But I want to work for her elevation in my own way, so that when she does vote, it will not be a failure. I cannot ‘Club,’ myself. I am an obstinate old Independent.... Men are chivalrous, you know. Do you suppose we women shall be so towards them, by and by, in the women’s millenium? Dear me! I like the old slavish bonds, and am perfectly willing men should rule the world yet, heathenish old maid that I am. Now, here I am perplexed with _two_ calls to the meeting to consider the matter of women’s voting, about which I have never made up my mind, and can’t! If I were a property woman, I might.”...

In writing of her volume of poetical works, published in 1868, Miss Larcom says,--

“I shall send a volume to your other self and you, (how are we to use adjectives in the Women’s Rights speech?), not by way of throwing a sop to Cerberus, but because of old friendship, and because I value your candid opinion _and_ Warrington’s very highly. I am a little more afraid of you than of him,--I remember Gail Hamilton and the wringing-machine. Don’t pillory me in a paragraph, will you? nor inspire the pen masculine with a _bon mot_ at my expense.”

At Miss Larcom’s particular request I have refrained from saying more than is necessary of her as a writer for _The Offering_. On her last visit to me, in 1892, while speaking of the material to be used in this book, she asked me not to say too much about her, because, as she said, she was “tired of being always cited as _the_ representative of _The Offering_ writers, when there were others who wrote and did quite as much, or more, for the magazine than I did.”

Miss Larcom is correct here. Her fame was achieved long after she ceased to be a mill-girl; and there were several others, as the sketches will show, who were as good writers, and much better known than herself, when she left the factory. And it is very thoughtful of her to speak a good word for those hitherto forgotten authors, by declining to be made a sort of composite portrait, as representing the best and brightest among them.

In one of her letters she says,--

“Don’t you think it is getting a little tiresome, this _posing_ as factory-girls of the olden time? It is very much like politicians boasting of carrying their dinners in a tin pail in their youth. What if they did?... I am proud to be a working-woman, as I always have been; but that special occupation was temporary, and not the business of our lives, we all knew, girls as we were.”...

“I sent you a copy of my ‘New England Girlhood,’ for old time’s sake. Did you receive it? You could write a more entertaining one. Why don’t you write a novel? I wish you would write up _The Offering_ time, and sketch Harriot Curtis in it. She was unique.”

Miss Larcom’s writings, all told, never yielded her income enough to live on, even in her modest way. In speaking of this matter in a letter written in February 1891, she says,--

“‘A New England Girlhood’ has as yet brought me only about two hundred dollars. How can writers live by writing?”

She was therefore obliged to supplement her literary labors by teaching. She was very prudent in her manner of living, and never, from childhood, really had a home of her own. Towards the last of her life she found herself much cramped for means to secure that rest her tired brain so much needed; and this made the gifts received from her publisher and from her dearly loved Wheaton Seminary pupils, most welcome, and enabled her, during her last illness, to feel a relief from pecuniary anxiety.

If Miss Larcom had not been exceptionally fortunate, not only in her temperament but in her surroundings,--hampered as she was all through her life by want of pecuniary means,--she could not have developed her writing talent so well. She had the rare gift of finding and keeping the right kind of friends, in her own family as well as outside, and these supplied to her life that practical (though not pecuniary) help she so much needed. So her days were free from household and other cares, and when relieved from her duties as teacher, or as editor, her time was free to use in her own chosen way.

In this, her life differed from that of many women writers, who, whether married or not, often have exacting cares which interrupt and hinder the expression of their written thoughts. Miss Larcom did not have that hindrance; and she had the chance through most of her life to carry out her idea, as she expressed it, of “developing the utmost that is in me.” She had no family or domestic cares, and her children were all “dream children.”

Miss Larcom might have married, once when she was quite young, and again later; but for reasons of her own she declined,--reasons, the validity of which, in one instance at least, I did not see. I have been asked if Mr. Whittier and Miss Larcom were never more than friends. I can truly answer, no. Miss Larcom was the intimate friend of Elizabeth Whittier, the poet’s sister, who, as she said, “was lovely in character, and had fine poetic taste.”

She often visited their home, and after the death of the sister the friendship with the brother continued. Miss Larcom was Mr. Whittier’s assistant in compiling the books of selections which bear his name, and did a great deal of the actual work in collecting material; they were true friends.

In a letter written shortly after his death, she says,--

“I have not spoken of Mr. Whittier going away. You will know that it is a real sorrow to me, and yet a joy that he has entered into a larger life.... This imperfect existence of ours _can be_ but the shadow of the true life; in that, there is no death.”...

One of her last letters to me was written from Boston a few weeks before her death, and is as follows:--

_Dear H._,--I have been here nearly a month, but have hardly been out at all. I have never been so much of an invalid, and I don’t like it. I suppose I have been steadily “running down,” the last year or so, but have gone on just as if I were well. Now I am brought to a stop, and am told that I must never do any more hard work. Lack of strength is what I feel most. They tell me that if I will really rest, brain and body, I may yet accomplish a good deal before I die. I do not feel as if I had got through yet; but who knows? I am trying to realize that it does not make much difference what part of the universe we are in, provided we are on the right track upward. Somehow I feel nearer Emmeline and Mr. Whittier,--as if we knew each other better now than before they went away. I should like to leave my life and work here just when I can go on with what is waiting for me elsewhere. But there is a Master of life who takes care of all that.

Ever truly yours,
LUCY LARCOM.

Of her religious life, it may be said that in her early childhood Lucy became a communicant of the Congregational church; but in later years, as her mind broadened, she became deeply imbued with a sense of the divine fatherhood of God, and the impossibility that He would leave one of the souls that He had made to perish eternally, or, as she says, to quote from her “Biography,” “After probing my heart, I find that it utterly refuses to believe that there is any corner in God’s universe where hope never comes, ... where love is not brooding, and seeking to penetrate the darkest abyss.”

In 1879 she first listened to Phillips Brooks, and his preaching to her “was the living realization of her own thought.” She did not give up her Puritanism, but thought she saw, in the belief and service of his church, a new way of finding the right path towards the end of her journey in search of the truth. As she wrote, “It is not _the_ church, but only one way of entering Christ’s church.” Her religious faith was not so much changed as deepened by this departure from some of the old-time beliefs; for, in writing of the matter to me, she said, “I count the faith of my whole life as one.”

Miss Larcom partook of the Holy Communion in Trinity Church, Boston, Easter, 1887, and was confirmed March 20, 1890. By this service, she said, her “heart was fixed,” and she could think of herself as “avowedly in the visible church.” It was after her connection with the Episcopal Church that Miss Larcom wrote her most important religious books, and these embody much of her own thought in matters concerning the deepest spiritual life.

“Similitudes,” a collection of prose poems, was published in 1853; and during the remaining years of her life she published and compiled fourteen books in prose and verse. Her last book, “The Unseen Friend,” was published in 1893. The above list does not include the two volumes of poetical selections compiled by herself and Mr. Whittier.

A complete edition of “Larcom’s Poems” was published by Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., in the Household edition of the poets, in 1884. In writing of this, Miss Larcom, with characteristic modesty, said, “The idea of my being ranked with other American poets.”

She was also editor of _Our Young Folks_ from about 1865 to 1872.

Although it is probable that Miss Larcom’s fame was achieved as an author of verse, yet she was the best satisfied with her prose productions. As she once said to me, “Essay writing would be my choice, rather than any other form of expression.”

It is probable that her name will be the longest remembered by her best-known lyric, “Hannah Binding Shoes;” but this was by no means her favorite, nor would she desire to be remembered by it alone, nor to have it considered as one of the best of her poems. And yet it contains the deep pathos and the tragedy that is in the lives of many solitary women, and as long as such exist, the story of “Poor Lone Hannah” will be read and remembered.

“Hannah Binding Shoes” was written shortly after Miss Larcom’s return from Illinois, when the great contrast between the rugged seacoast, so familiar to her early years, and the “boundlessness of commonplace,” of the level country she had just left, impressed her most vividly. One summer afternoon, in riding through Marblehead, a face at a window riveted her attention, and haunted her for weeks. Meanwhile, the refrain of the lyric, with its peculiar meter, and the face, continually chased each other through her mind, until, to get rid of their importunate presence, she one day sat down, and imprisoned them together in “immortal verse.”

Another poem which takes high rank is “The Rose Enthroned,” her earliest contribution to the _Atlantic Monthly_, which, in the absence of signature, was attributed to Emerson. Also, “A Loyal Woman’s No,” a patriotic lyric that attracted great attention during our Civil War.

It is such poems as these, with her religious writings and her “Childhood Songs,” that will make Lucy Larcom’s name remembered. And thousands of earnest working-women will thank her for all that she has written, and go on their way refreshed and encouraged by her success and the fulfilment of her aspirations.

In personal appearance Miss Larcom was tall and stately; her hair was wavy and of a light brown color. Her eyes were of a lovely smiling blue, and her whole face was lit by the charm of them. And who that has heard it can forget her musical laugh, so attractive that even strangers would turn and listen to it, or lose the memory of her beautiful smile, so radiant, so illuminating, that lasted even to the end of her life and that left its lingering gleam on her face after it was cold in death, then to be transplanted to that other life because it was a part of her own immortal self!

Her whole atmosphere was full of a benignant interest in those with whom she came into personal relations. She lived up to her profession, both in religion and in ethics, and was a bright example of what a woman can become, who believes that this life is but the beginning of the next, and who takes the higher law for her inspiration and her guide.

She died April 17, 1893, and is buried in Beverly, Mass., her native place. There, by the seashore, where the salt breezes--

“Chase the white sails o’er the sea,”

and linger lovingly over her grave, her tired body finds its earthly resting-place.

Farewell, old friend and work-mate, but not forever; I too have the conviction, the faith, that this is not all of life, but that sometime, somewhere, we shall take up these broken threads, and go on with our appointed work “on the right track upward.”

SARAH SHEDD.

Miss Shedd may be called the philanthropist, _par excellence_, of the early mill-girls. Her whole life was one of self-sacrifice. Her early years were devoted to earning money for the support or the education of members of the family; and at its close she bequeathed the sum of $2,500 for the establishment of the free library in her native town of Washington, N.H.

Her parents were in narrow circumstances; but they had endowed her with a good mind, and had given her a fair education, which was supplemented by tuition under Mary Lyon, of Holyoke Seminary, one of the first women preceptors of her time. She had a great desire to further continue her education, but was obliged to do it unaided. She began to teach a summer school when fifteen years of age, and worked in the cotton-mill in the winter, and thus was enabled to help her family, as well as to gratify her taste for reading and study.

In early life she educated a brother; and later she nearly supported him, and also assumed the whole expense of her aged mother’s maintenance. And yet, in spite of these large drains upon her resources, she saved, solely from her own money, enough to start the library which bears her name, that her townspeople might enjoy the advantages she had so much desired. The Hon. Carroll D. Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor, was one of her pupils, and he delivered the address at the dedication of The Shedd Free Public Library, in 1882, speaking thus in praise of his well-beloved teacher:--

“The first school I ever attended was kept by her, in the front room of the store opposite the post-office. Her genial smile won the hearts of the children.... We longed for her coming, regretted her going. She wandered with us over the hills and fields, gave us instruction from her heart and mind, as well as from the books we used.... Her genial disposition lighted the pathway of many a boy and girl, and gave them glimpses of a mind and soul, which in themselves make her memory as fragrant as spring flowers.”

Miss Shedd was not a prolific writer, and her contributions for _The Offering_ were always of a serious nature. She spent no money on fine clothes nor ornaments; I remember her as a tall, spare, stooping woman, most plainly dressed in calico. We younger ones did not understand her, and were awed by her silence and reserve. But later some of us came to recognize her character as that of one studious, gentle, and self-sacrificing. She remains in my mind as one of the “solitary” among us. She died in Washington, N.H., April 5, 1867.

It is one of the coincidents of history, that, at about the same time Miss Shedd’s money was given towards founding this library, another native of the same little town, Mr. Luman T. Jefts, who had also worked his way up and earned every cent of his money, should supplement Miss Shedd’s gift by adding a sum large enough to erect a suitable library building to contain the books bought by her bequest.

And thus their names are linked together by their grateful townsmen, not only as benefactors of their kind, but also as two earnest and sincere persons who have struggled with adversity and narrow surroundings, have conquered, and fulfilled their cherished aim in life.

ELIZABETH EMERSON TURNER.

The subject of this sketch is one of the few of the early mill-girls who are still living; my acquaintance with her has been kept up since early girlhood, and our correspondence has been almost uninterrupted. She married Mr. Charles B. Sawyer, of Chicago, who died in 1896. Mrs. Sawyer has always retained her interest in the old factory days, and was and is proud of her connection with _The Lowell Offering_. In our letters, the prospect of publishing a book containing the material I had collected was often discussed; and she expressed her sympathy with the enterprise, saying,--

“I wish you would take up such a work as you allude to, in justice to those most interested, and to that class of girls in the Lowell mills. You are the one best fitted to do them full credit. I think the book would meet with a good sale, as labor is now becoming once more honorable and respectable.... We will see if our _Lowell Offering_ cannot be made to live for many, _many_ years to come; and be an object-lesson to the mill-girls of the present day.”

Lizzie Turner was born in Lyme, N.H., Aug. 27, 1822. Her father, Jacob Turner, Esq., was a descendant in the sixth generation from Humphrey Turner, who came from England, and settled in Plymouth, Mass. He was for twenty years a justice of the peace in Lyme, and for two years a member of the New Hampshire Legislature. He lost his health before he reached middle life, and about the same time lost nearly all of his property by signing a note for a friend, who ran away to Canada, leaving him to pay the debt. In order to do this he sold his farm; and after paying the sum required, he had just five hundred dollars left. With this he went to Lowell, in 1833, where so many families who had lost their bread-winner had preceded him, and where the mother and children could assist in supporting the home. Mrs. Turner opened a boarding-house for operatives; her children, as fast as they were old enough, went to work in the mill; and thus the invalid father was well taken care of for the rest of his life.

Lizzie went into the mill to work at eleven years of age. Her school-days ended at fourteen, when she was just fitted for the high school, having worked at least two-thirds of the time in the factory; and after this her time and strength were needed to help support the family. She was one of the very earliest of the writers for _The Offering_, and she continued to be a contributor until Mr. Thomas ceased to be the editor. Her early recollections are very valuable, and all through these pages I have made free use of what information she has given me. She was just eighteen when she began her contributions; and her own account of her connection with the magazine and of its inception, will be of interest here. She says:--

“The whole plan of his Circle and _Offering_ originated with Brother Thomas. I remember his saying one evening, after the reading of our papers, that there were many of the articles well worthy of publication, and that he should publish them in a magazine, to ‘show what factory-girls could do.’... I must tell you that I had never attempted writing anything but letters till Brother Thomas insisted that I _must_ write something for the Circle, so that almost my first essays in composition were those articles.”

Miss Turner was one of the paid contributors; she bought herself a mahogany bureau with some of this money, and that article of furniture she cherishes among her choicest possessions, as a most valuable memento of the old _Lowell Offering_.

I remember Lizzie Turner, when a young girl, as an intellectual factor among the contributors to _The Offering_, and also as a prominent worker in the Universalist Church. She was sprightly, vivacious, and universally popular. She was tall and graceful, had dark-brown hair, and star-bright eyes, which now, although she is a grandmother, have lost very little of their lustre, nor is her kindly and smiling expression diminished.

To illustrate the simplicity of dress of the mill-girls, before spoken of, and also to show how little thought they had of rivalling or of outdoing each other in matter of adornment, I venture to give the following as related to me by Mrs. Sawyer:--

“There were ten of us girl friends (the majority of whom wrote for _The Offering_) who one summer had each a purple satin cape for street wear. These were trimmed with black lace; and this, with a small-figured, light Merrimack print (or calico), constituted our walking costume. We had nothing better for Sunday wear; and as we walked along, sometimes all together, I am sure that it never occurred to one of us that we were not as well-dressed as any lady we met.”

During the Civil War, Mrs. Sawyer was one of the most efficient among the many women in Chicago who worked for the soldiers and the country, and she has devoted much time and thought to the woman suffrage cause. She is a voter and an active member of The Illinois Woman’s Alliance, of the Illinois Woman’s Press Association, and of the Chicago Woman’s Club.

Her sister, Abby D. Turner, was also one of the earliest writers for _The Offering_; her first contribution was written when she was sixteen years of age. She was married while in her teens to Mr. John Caryl. She has been a widow many years, and has been entirely devoted to her children and grandchildren.

CLEMENTINE AVERILL.

Among the “girl graduates” from the New England cotton-mill, there is one who, although not a writer for _The Offering_, yet deserves to be included in a book like this. This is Clementine Averill.

There was often doubt thrown upon the accounts of the superior mental, moral, and physical condition of the Lowell factory-girl; and at one time (in 1850) a Senator of the United States, named Clemens (of Alabama, I think), stated in Congress that “the Southern slaves were better off than the Northern operatives.” Miss Averill, then at work in the Lowell mill, answered this person’s allegation in a letter to the New York _Tribune_, as follows:--

LETTER FROM A FACTORY-GIRL TO SENATOR CLEMENS.

Communicated for _The Weekly Tribune_.

LOWELL, _March 6, 1850_.

_Mr. Clemens_,--Sir, in some of the late papers I have read several questions which you asked concerning the New England operatives. They have been well answered perhaps, but enough has not yet been said, and I deem it proper that the operatives should answer for themselves.

1st, You wish to know what pay we have. I will speak only for the girls, and think I am stating it very low when I say that we average two dollars a week beside our board. Hundreds of girls in these mills clear from three to five dollars a week, while others, who have not been here long, and are not used to the work, make less than two dollars. If my wages are ever reduced lower than that, I shall seek employment elsewhere.

2d, Children are never taken from their parents and put into the mill. What an idea! No person has a right to take a child from its parents, whether they be black or white, bond or free, unless there is danger of the child’s suffering harm by remaining with its parents. Girls come here from the country of their own free will, because they can earn more money, and because they wish to see and know more of the world.

3d, One manufacturer will employ laborers dismissed by another if they bring a regular discharge and have given two weeks’ notice previous to leaving.

4th, We never work more than twelve and a half hours a day; the majority would not be willing to work less, if their earnings were less, as they only intend working a few years, and they wish to make all they can while here, for they have only one object in view.

5th, When operatives are sick they select their own physician, and usually have money enough laid by to supply all their wants. If they are sick long, and have not money enough, those who have give to them freely; for let me tell you, there is warm-hearted charity here, as well as hard work and economy.

6th, I have inquired, but have not ascertained that one person ever went from a factory to a poor-house in this city.

7th, Any person can see us, who wishes to, by calling for us at the counting-room, or after hours of labor by calling at our boarding-places.

8th, The factory girls generally marry, and their husbands are expected to care for them when old. There are some, however, who do not marry, but such often have hundreds and thousands of dollars at interest; if you do not believe it, come and examine the bank-books and railroad stocks for yourself.

9th, We have as much and as good food as we want. We usually have warm biscuit, or nice toast and pie, with good bread and butter, coffee and tea, for breakfast; for dinner, meat and potatoes, with vegetables, tomatoes, and pickles, pudding or pie, with bread, butter, coffee and tea; for supper we have nice bread or warm biscuit, with some kind of sauce, cake, pie, and tea. But these questions seem to relate merely to our animal wants. We have all that is necessary for the health and comfort of the body, if that is all; and the richest person needs no more. But is the body all? Have we no minds to improve, no hearts to purify? Truly, to provide for our physical wants is our first great duty, in order that our mental faculties may be fully developed. If we had no higher nature than the animal, life would not be worth possessing; but we have Godlike faculties to cultivate and expand, without limit and without end. What is the object of our existence, if it is not to glorify God? and how shall we glorify him but by striving to be like him, aiming at the perfection of our whole nature, and aiding all within our influence in their onward progress to perfection? Do you think we would come here and toil early and late with no other object in view than the gratification of mere animal propensities? No, we would not try to live; and this is wherein consists the insult, both in your questions and in your remarks in the Senate; as though to provide for the body was all we had to live for, as though we had no immortal minds to train for usefulness and a glorious existence.

Let us see whether the “Southern slaves are better off than the Northern operatives.” As I have said, we have all that is necessary for health and comfort. Do the slaves have more? It is in the power of every young girl who comes here to work, if she has good health and no one but herself to provide for, to acquire every accomplishment, and get as good an education as any lady in the country. Have the slaves that privilege? By giving two weeks’ notice we can leave when we please, visit our friends, attend any school, or travel for pleasure or information. Some of us have visited the White Mountains, Niagara Falls, and the city of Washington; have talked with the President, and visited the tomb of him who was greatest and best. Would that our present rulers had a portion of the same spirit which animated him; then would misrule and oppression cease, and the gathering storm pass harmless by. Can the slaves leave when they please, and go where they please? are they allowed to attend school, or travel for pleasure, and sit at the same table with any gentleman or lady? Some of the operatives of this city have been teachers in institutions of learning in your own State. Why do your people send here for teachers if your slaves are better off than they? Shame on the man who would stand up in the Senate of the United States, and say that the slaves at the South are better off than the operatives of New England; such a man is not fit for any office in a free country. Are we torn from our friends and kindred, sold and driven about like cattle, chained and whipped, and not allowed to speak one word in self-defence? We can appeal to the laws for redress, while the slaves cannot.... And now, Mr. Clemens, I would most earnestly invite you, Mr. Foote, and all other Southern men who want to know anything about us, to come and see us. We will treat you with all the politeness in our power. I should be pleased to see you at my boarding-place, No. 61 Kirk Street, Boott Corporation. In closing, I must say that I pity not only the slave, but the slave-owner. I pity him for his want of principle, for his hardness of heart and wrong education. May God, in his infinite mercy, convince all pro-slavery men of the great sin of holding their fellow-men in bondage! May he turn their hearts from cruelty and oppression to the love of himself and all mankind! Please excuse me for omitting the “Hon.” before your name. I cannot apply titles where they are not deserved.

CLEMENTINE AVERILL.

Miss Averill had many letters of congratulation upon this letter, from different parts of the country; and among them was one from the celebrated Quaker philanthropist, Isaac T. Hopper, who indorsed her words, as follows:--

NEW YORK, 3d mo., 19th, 1850.

_My much esteemed friend, Clementine Averill_,--I call thee so on the strength of thy letter of the 6th inst., addressed to Senator Clemens, which I have read in the _Tribune_ of this morning with much satisfaction. I ought to apologize for thus intruding upon thy attention, being an entire stranger; but really I experienced so much gratification on reading it that I could not resist the inclination I felt to tell thee how much I was pleased with it. The information it contained, though perhaps not very gratifying to the advocates of slavery, may be useful, as it so clearly exhibits the wide difference there is between liberty and slavery, and it shows the ignorance of the Southern people as to the condition of the Northern operatives. I think Senator Clemens must have been greatly surprised in reading thy letter, not only at its statement of facts, but at the talent displayed by a “factory-girl” in answering his questions. Some years ago I attended a meeting appointed at Lowell by a minister of the Society of Friends, at which it was said there were about three hundred “factory-girls;” and I have often expressed the satisfaction I felt in observing their independent and happy countenances and modest and correct deportment. I saw nothing like gloom or despondency. Indeed, I think in a general way they would not suffer by a comparison with the daughters of the Southern slaveholders. I believe it would be found, that, for refinement, intelligence, and for any qualification that is requisite to constitute an agreeable companion, the “factory-girls” are not inferior to any class of women in the South, notwithstanding the slurs that are often flung at them. It is surely true, that as the benign spirit of the gospel pervades the minds of men, slavery will be seen in its true character, and be finally abolished from every community professing Christianity. I would not limit the mercy of our beneficent Creator, but I am free to confess that I am unable to see what claim a slaveholder can have to the name of Christian. Avarice and an undue love of the world blinds the eyes and hardens the hearts of many. The speech of Daniel Webster, from whom the friends of liberty had a right to expect much, has disappointed them, and has not pleased his pro-slavery coadjutors. He has manifested himself to be a _timeserver_, a character not very desirable. If he had possessed as much Christian principle and independence of mind as thy letter exhibits, he would have given utterance to sentiments that would have gained him the applause of the wise and good, and have been a lasting honor to himself. “With the talents of an angel a man may make himself a fool.” The subject of slavery is not new to me. I have been instrumental in rescuing from the hand of the oppressor some hundreds, and now in my declining years I can look back upon those labors with unmingled satisfaction. I don’t know how to express my views of slavery better than in the language of John Wesley, “It is the sum of all villanies.”

I am, with sincere regard,

Thy friend,
ISAAC T. HOPPER.

I am indebted to Miss Averill’s sister, Mrs. A. L. O. Stone of Cleveland, Ohio, for the means of communicating with her, and of obtaining some account of her life. Miss Averill’s letter is as follows:--

“VALRICO, FLA., _Mar. 15, 1893_.

_Dear Mrs. Robinson_,-- ... I do not remember the date of my first entrance into the City of Spindles, but think it must have been in 1828; and it was the summer of 1830 that I was baptized in the Concord River, at the age of fifteen, and joined the First Baptist Church. I was born at Mt. Vernon, N.H., in the year 1815; so now I am seventy-eight.

About my Florida life, I must first tell the motive.

As you are aware, after the war, many were out of employment; and it was a great question, what should be done with them. I could see no better way than co-operative homes. Therefore, with two others, I started out to find a place, and set an example. I thought of some other places, but was much interested in Florida, having just read its history, and also my friends wished to come here. And, indeed, they did come before I was quite ready. A month later I came alone, December, 1877, just at Christmas time, and found the people here celebrating the day by firing guns. At Tampa I found one of my friends who had already selected land, and wished me to take an adjoining quarter-section. Had to come out from Tampa twelve miles to examine the land before I could enter my claim, then returned to register, and move my baggage out to a deserted log cabin in an old field by the side of the woods. The cabin had no floor but the bare ground, no window, and but one door. I spread a carpet of pine straw, and slept well.”

She spent the winter in her forlorn log cabin, but in the spring she had a kitchen and bedroom, and soon after a split board floor. She “planted two hundred orange-trees, and cared for them two years.” She made a living by “keeping transient boarders, by washing, needlework, baking bread and cakes to sell, and keeping house for various persons.”

When her health began to fail, she made an agreement with one of her neighbors, Mr. Green, “to take care of me as long as I lived for half of my land; so the deed was made out and recorded, and I have only sixty acres for the industrial home.” Later she writes:--

“I have never, for a moment, given up the idea of having an industrial home and school here sometime.

It is a pleasant location, having a small pond all under my control, with beautiful pine and oak trees all around it, and green slope down to the water. It is only ten minutes’ walk to the station and post-office, and most of the way on my land. I gave right of way for a railroad through one corner, and yesterday gave one acre for a Baptist church.

I want a co-operative home here, established by homeless people who are willing to form a _Mutual Aid_ Society. Then I can deed my land to the society, for a perpetual home here, as long as human beings need a home on this earth.

Perhaps you know some persons who might wish to join this home. If you do, please put me in communication with them, and they can ask all the questions they wish, and I will answer.

This station is fourteen miles east of Tampa, on the Florida Central and Peninsula Railroad.

Truly your friend,
CLEMENTINE AVERILL.”