What a welcome and beautiful vision that was when the four brothers, in blue broadcloth and white collars, turned down _a la_ Byron, and little sister Abby in silk, soft lace, and blue ribbon, appeared on the platform to sing their quaint ballads of freedom! Fresh from the hills of New Hampshire, they looked so sturdy, so vigorous, so pure, so true that they seemed fitting representatives of all the cardinal virtues, and even a howling mob could not resist their influence.

Perhaps, after one of their ballads, the mob would listen five minutes to Wendell Phillips or Garrison until he gave them some home thrusts, when all was uproar again.

The Northern merchants who made their fortunes out of Southern cotton, the politicians who wanted votes, and the ministers who wanted to keep peace in the churches, were all as much opposed to the anti-slavery agitation as were the slaveholders themselves.

These were the classes the mob represented, though seemingly composed of gamblers, liquor dealers, and demagogues.

For years the anti-slavery struggle at the North was carried on against statecraft, priestcraft, the cupidity of the moneyed classes, and the ignorance of the masses, but, in spite of all these forces of evil, it triumphed at last.
I was in Boston at the time that Lane and Wright, some metaphysical Englishmen, and our own Alcott held their famous philosophical conversations, in which Elizabeth Peabody took part.