In the spring of 1844 Mrs. White had taken her daughter Maria to Philadelphia to spare her the rigors of the North, and they had found lodgings at 127 Arch Street, with Friend Parker, a kindly Quakeress, who had made them acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. E. M. Davis, influential members of the Society of Friends. An intimacy grew up between them, for they had a strong bond of sympathy in their common zeal for the cause of anti-slavery and other reforms, and a few weeks after the return of the Whites to Watertown, Maria wrote to her new friends: “I have talked so much to James of Philadelphia, that I have inspired him with a desire to try its virtues if he has an opportunity. We shall probably be married in the spring and I wish very much to spend it there, instead of in our bleak New England, and we should do so if we heard of any opening or employment for him during so short a period as three months. I suppose the season for lectures would be over then, and I fear that Destiny has not been so kind as to arrange any exact labors for him then, simply because he wishes to go. But should you hear of any situation for a literary man at that time, however small the recompense, might I not depend on your kindness to let us know of it?” For some reason the marriage took place as we have seen at the close of 1844, and not in the spring of 1845. Mr. and Mrs. Lowell stayed a day or two in New York at the New York Hotel, whose splendor amazed them, and reached Philadelphia on the first day of the new year. By a happy augury, the weather had been delightful on their journey, and they had almost a breath of summer in midwinter. They went at once to Friend Parker’s, and settled down to happy work. The scheme of lecturing had come to nothing, but Mr. Davis had arranged that Lowell should do some editorial work on the _Pennsylvania Freeman_. That paper had taken the place of the _National Enquirer_, when Benjamin Lundy relinquished its management. Whittier went to Philadelphia in the spring of 1838 to edit the _Freeman_, and remained there two years, when his frail health compelled him to retire. The paper had been temporarily suspended in the interest of the _National Anti-Slavery Standard_, but had been revived and was now under the editorial control of C. C. Burleigh and J. Miller McKim. The situation of the young pair is sketched in the following letter to Robert Carter:-- 127 ARCH STREET, PHILADELPHIA, Jan’y 14, 1845.