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| 776 THE UNDERGROUND RAIL ROAD. it yon are fortified to act and vote independently whenever year interests are at stake." That p&rt of her lecture (and there was ranch of it) that dwelt on the moral duties and domestic relations of the colored people was pitched on the highest key of sound morality. She urged the cultivation of the " home life," the sanctity of the marriage state (a happy contrast to her strong-minded, free-love, white sistera of the North), and the duties of mothers to their daughters. " Why," said she in a voice of much surprise, " I have actually heard since I have been South that sometimes colored husbands positively beat their wives 1 I do not mean to insinuate for a moment that such things can possibly happen in Mobile. The very appearance of this congregation forbids it; but I did hear of one terrible husband defending himself for the unmanly practice with " Well, I have got to whip her or leave her." There were parts of the lecturer's discourse that grated a little on a white Southern ear, but it waa lost and forgiven in the genuine earnestness and profound good sense with which the woman spoke to her kind in words of sound advice. On the whole, we are very glad we accepted the Zion'a invitation. It gave us much food for new thought. It reminded ns, perhaps, of neglected duties to these people, and it impressed strongly on our minds that these people are getting along, getting onward, and progress waa a star becoming familiar to their gaze and their desires. Whatever the Degrees have done in tbe path of advancement, they have done largely without white aid. But politics and white pride have kept the white people aloof from offering that earnest and moral assistance which would be BO useful to a people juat starting from infancy into a life of self-dependence. la writing from Columbiana and Demopolis, Alabama, about the first of March, 1871, Mrs. Harper painted the state of affairs in her usually graphic manner, and diligently was she endeavoring to inspire the people with hope and encouragement. " Oh, what & field there is here in this region I Let me give yon a short account of this week's work. Sunday I addressed a Sunday-school in Taladega: on Monday afternoon a day-school. On Monday I rode several miles to a meeting; addressed it, and came back the same night. Got back about or after twelve o'clock. The next day I had a meeting of women and addressed them, and then lectured in the evening in the Court-House to both colored and white. Last night I spoke again, about ten miles from where I am now (topping, and returned the same night, and to-morrow evening probably I shall speak again. I grow quite tired part of the time. * * * And now let me give you an anecdote or two of some of onr new citizens. While in Takdega I was entertained and well entertained, at the house of one of our new citizens. He ia living in the honse of his former master. He is a brick-maker by trade, and I rather think mason also. He was •worth to his owner, it was reckoned, fifteen hundred or about that a year. He worked with him (even years; and in that seven years he remembers receiving from him fifty cents. Now mark the contrast I That man is now free, owns the home of his former master, hu I think more than sixty acres of land, and his master is in the poor-bouse. I heard of another such case not long since: A woman waa cruelly treated once, or more than once. She escaped and ran naked into town. The villain in whose clntch she found herself was trying to drag her downward to his own low level of impurity, and at last she fell. She was poorly fed, so that she was tempted to sell her person. Even scraps thrown to the dog she was hanger-bitten enough to aim for. FOOT thing, waa there anything in tbe future for her? Had not hanger and cruelty and prostitution done their work, and left her an entire wreck for life ? It seems not. Freedom came, and with it dawned a new ei» upon that poor, overshadowed, and sin-darkened life. Freedom brought oppor- |