The people of Henderson were all very friendly to me personally, and my relations always pleasant with them; but the injustice of the state of society made a gradually deepening impression on my mind. The inhabitants lived in constant fear of an outbreak among the slaves. Women did not dare to walk in the pleasant woods and country around the village, for terror of runaway slaves. Painful social contrasts constantly forced themselves on my notice. I well remember sitting with my hostess, who was reclining in her rocking-chair, on the broad, shaded verandah, one pleasant Sunday morning, listening to the distant church bells and the rustling of the locust trees, when the eldest daughter, a tall, graceful girl, dressed for Sunday, in fresh and floating summer drapery, came into the verandah on her way to church. Just at that moment a shabby, forlorn-looking negro in dirty rags approached the verandah; he was one of the slaves working in the tobacco plantation. His errand was to beg the mistress to let him have a clean shirt on that Sunday morning. The contrast of the two figures, the young lady and the slave, and the sharp reprimand with which his mistress from her rocking-chair drove the slave away, left a profound impression on my mind. Kind as the people were to me personally, the sense of justice was continually outraged; and at the end of the first term of engagement I resigned the situation. CHAPTER II EARNING MONEY FOR MEDICAL STUDY 1845-1847 _The idea taking shape._—When I returned from the Kentucky engagement the family had removed to the pleasant suburb of Walnut Hills, where the well-known Lane Theological Seminary, under the direction of the Beechers and Professor Stowe, was situated. This healthy place, with its intellectual resources, became the home for many years. I found the family sharing a delightful house with the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Vail, to whom it belonged, who, with their charming daughter and the professor and elder students of the seminary, formed a very intelligent society. It was during the residence of the family on Walnut Hills that the noble-hearted woman, Lucy Stone, became the wife of an elder brother of mine. My brothers were engaged in business, my sisters variously occupied, the family life was full and active, and for a while I keenly enjoyed the return home. But I soon felt the want of a more engrossing pursuit than the study of music, German, and metaphysics, and the ordinary interests that social life presented.