auctioneer if he had chosen that business. “And more than all that, gentlemen, they say he is one of those praying Methodist niggers; who bids? A thousand—fifteen hundred—two thousand—twenty-five hundred! Going, going! last call! _Gone!_” The audience were wrought up to a perfect frenzy of excitement while that picture was being drawn, and when real contributions instead of imaginary bids were called for, the sum was easily raised and the girls were free. He says of it: “I think that of all the meetings that I have attended in my life, for a panic of sympathy I never saw one that surpassed that. I have seen a great many in my day. An amount of money was subscribed, and they were bought and set free. The mother was a very old woman. She had been a nurse of a great Richmond lawyer whose name has died out of my memory. He owed his conversion to her. He was famous in the days of Webster.” We have lying before us as we write a little leather-covered account-book, soiled and worn by use, which has upon its first pages letters from various humanitarians—William Lloyd Garrison being among the number—recommending to the Christian public one Pomona Brice, who “is engaged in collecting money to secure the ransom of her daughter and two grandchildren who are scattered somewhere in North Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Missouri.” The names of subscribers follow, with the sums subscribed—ranging from twenty-five cents to ten dollars—among which stands the familiar autograph “H. W. Beecher, if the whole is made up, five dollars.” Receipts from the different savings-banks where she had deposited the money; a letter from her lawyer to Mr. Beecher telling him that at her request he had examined the laws of the above-mentioned States, and found them all against her; a bill for his services and a judgment of the court against her for $100, all either directed or entrusted to Mr. Beecher, give us an inkling of another kind of work that wore upon his time, sympathy, and purse. Not only did he help by his subscriptions some poor mother or grandmother to buy the liberty of her children or grandchildren, but sometimes brought the slave upon Plymouth pulpit and raised the money for its redemption on the spot. A handful of letters in our possession gives the preliminaries to such a transaction.