Massachusetts -- Periodicals; New England -- Periodicals
It is gratifying, also, to record another fact. During the third week in
July the Old South lectures for young people, illustrative of "The War
for the Union," were inaugurated in Boston. The ancient "meeting-house"
was crowded with earnest students to hear the first lecture on slavery,
delivered by William Lloyd Garrison, Jr. The speaker gave a vivid sketch
of the chief events of the anti-slavery movement, and of the part taken
by George Thompson, Garrison, Phillips, Whittier, and Harriet Martineau.
* * * * *
Students of the anti-slavery struggle should not forget, however, how
much the success of that struggle was due to Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman,
whose death occurred at Weymouth, Mass., on July 12. She was not only a
_magna pars_ of the struggle, but one of the most remarkable women
of our time. Mrs. Maria Child used to relate how Mrs. Chapman, clad in
the height of fashion of that day, came into the first anti-slavery
fair, an entire stranger to every one present. "She looked around over
the few tables, scantily supplied, and stopped by some faded artificial
flowers. The poor commodity only indicated the utter poverty of means to
carry on the work. We thought her a spy, or maybe she was a
slave-holder." From that time she entered heartily into the work. She
became the life of the Female Anti-slavery Society in Boston, she spoke
often in public; her pen was never idle when it could advance the cause
of equal rights and freedom.
Mr. Lowell, in his rhymed letter, descriptive of an anti-slavery bazaar
at Faneuil Hall, and the celebrities of the cause there assembled, drew
the portrait of this gifted woman with his usual felicitous touch:--
"There was Maria Chapman, too,
With her swift eyes of clear steel-blue,
The coiled up mainspring of the Fair,
Originating everywhere
The expansive force, without a sound,
That whirls a hundred wheels around;
Herself meanwhile as calm and still
As the bare crown of Prospect Hill;
A noble woman, brave and apt,
Cumaea's sybil not more rapt,
Who might, with those fair tresses shorn,
'The Maid of Orlean' casque have worn;
Herself the Joan of our Arc,
For every shaft a shining mark."
* * * * *
It is one thing to be a good ship-builder for the government, and quite
another thing to be in favor with the Secretary of the Navy, at
Washington. This is the lesson, and the only lesson, which can be
deduced from the two dispatches which have been transmitted over the
country, namely: that the "Dolphin" has been rejected, and that John
Roach, her builder, has failed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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