However, the greatest event of my three days’ sojourn in Boston was my introduction (through Mr. Mayo) to Mr. Theodore Parker, on Sunday evening, I having attended the morning’s service in Music Hall. Through Mr. Parker, I met Mr. William Lloyd Garrison and Mr. Wendell Phillips, as well as a number of other prominent men and women. These three men who were pictured so often in Cleveland as three ferocious lions, I found gentle in manners, humanitarian in thought and word and earnest in purpose, possessors of great souls, feeling hearts and sincere patriotism. I was cordially welcomed by them and kept up this relation until the close of their lives, holding even a very honoring relation as professional adviser in their families. It was a genial circle of friends, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Parker, who in their easy, informal manner of enjoying each other, impressed me as so utterly different from what I had heard of them, they having been represented by word of mouth as well as in print as the most dangerous and violent revolutionists. I remember the delicate and graceful figure of Miss Matilda Goddard, the cordial Miss Hannah Stevens, Dr. William F. Channing and Mr. W. L. Garrison, as the center of groups in the spacious parlors, when the talk was of religious and anti-slavery themes, with a frequent easy and cordial laugh at the expense of nobody. Before returning to Cleveland, I received letters from Mrs. C. Vaughan, a member of Mr. Mayo’s congregation, who was shocked to learn of our great bereavement in the death of our mother. She offered me a home for the winter, with the kindest assurance that financial help might be gained by forming German conversational classes for the evenings. Thus, on my return, I removed from Mrs. Mayo’s home, where my assistance had become unnecessary, owing to the death of the little baby, to the hospitable mansion occupied by the Vaughan family and the daughter, Mrs. G. Willey, and her husband. A few words as to the social and educational standing of this family will be pardonable, especially as they were of so rare an occurrence at the time. Southerners by birth, they were yet opposed to slavery, having set their slaves free by bringing them to Cincinnati. Highly cultivated and talented as well as financially well-to-do, they unconcernedly became true reformers in many ways. The daughter, Mrs. Willey, wrote good Free Soil poetry, then needed by that movement; other members of the family developed their special talents as writers or musicians, while Mrs. Vaughan used her advantages for making propaganda by encouraging Lyceum lectures, which system was then in its infancy. And she invited nearly all prominent speakers to stay at her house while in Cleveland.