There was a pleasant interview at this time which may fitly be mentioned. The venerable Josiah Quincy, just entered on his ninety-first year, hearing of the enterprise, desired to see one who had charge of it. I went to his chamber, where he had been confined to his bed for many weeks with a fractured limb. He talked like a patriot who read the hour and its duty. He felt troubled lest adequate power had not been given to protect the enterprise,--said that but for his disability he should be glad to write something about it, but that he was living "the postscript of his life"; and as we parted, he gave his hearty benediction to the work and to myself. Restored in a measure to activity, he is still spared to the generation which fondly cherishes his old age; and recently, at the organization of the Union Club, he read to his fellow-citizens, gathering close about him and hanging on his speech, words of counsel and encouragement. On the morning of the 3d of March, 1862, the first delegation of superintendents and teachers, fifty-three in all, of whom twelve were women, left the harbor of New York, on board the United States steam-transport Atlantic, arriving at Beaufort on the 9th. It was a voyage never to be forgotten. The enterprise was new and strange, and it was not easy to predict its future. Success or defeat might be in store for us; and we could only trust in God that our strength would be equal to our responsibilities. As the colonists approached the shores of South Carolina, they were addressed by the agent in charge, who told them the little he had learned of their duties, enjoined patience and humanity, impressed on them the greatness of their work, the results of which were to cheer or dishearten good men, to settle, perhaps, one way or the other, the social problem of the age,--assuring them that never did a vessel bear a colony on a nobler mission, not even the Mayflower, when she conveyed the Pilgrims to Plymouth, that it would be a poorly written history which should omit their individual names, and that, if faithful to their trust, there would come to them the highest of all recognitions ever accorded to angels or to men, in this life or the next,--"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me."