demption of the remaining two of her family was soon on foot. It may be interesting to know that the subscription list was headed by the lovely and benevolent Jenny Lind Goldschmidt.
Some of the ladies who listened to this touching story were so much interested in Mrs. Edmondson personally, they wished to have her daguerreotype taken; both that they might be strengthened and refreshed by the sight of her placid countenance, and that they might see the beauty of true goodness beaming there.
She accordingly went to the rooms with them, with all the simplicity of a little child. "O," said she, to one of the ladies, "you can't think how happy it's made me to get here, where everybody is so kind to me! Why, last night, when I went home, I was so happy I couldn't sleep. I had to go and tell my Saviour, over and over again, how happy I was."
A lady spoke to her about reading something. "Law bless you, honey! I can't read a letter."
"Then," said another lady, "how have you learned so much of God, and heavenly things?"
"Well, 'pears like a gift from above."
"Can you have the Bible read to you?" "Why, yes; Paul, he reads a little, but then he has so much work all day, and when he gets home at night he's so tired! and his eyes is bad. But then the Sperit teaches us."
"Do you go much to meeting?"
"Not much now, we live so far. In winter I can't never. But, O! what meetings I have had, alone in the corner,—my Saviour and only me!" The smile with which these words were spoken was a thing to be remembered. A little girl, daughter of one of the ladies, made some rather severe remarks about somebody in the daguerreotype rooms, and her mother checked her.
The old lady looked up, with her placid smile. "That puts me in mind," she said, "of what I heard a preacher say once. 'My friends,' says he, 'if you know of anything that will make a brother's heart glad, run quick and tell it; but if it is something that will only cause a sigh, 'bottle it up, bottle it up!' O, I often tell my children, 'Bottle it up, bottle it up!'"
When the writer came to part with the old lady, she said to her: "Well, good-by, my dear friend; remember and pray for me."
"Pray for you!" she said, earnestly. "Indeed I shall,—I can"t help it." She then, raising her finger, said, in an emphatic tone, peculiar to the old of her race, "Tell you what! we never gets no good bread ourselves till we begins to ask for our brethren."
The writer takes this opportunity to inform all those friends, in different parts of the country, who generously contributed for the redemption of these children, that they are at last free!
The following extract from the letter of a lady in Washington may be interesting to them:
I have seen the Edmondson parents,—Paul and his wife Milly. I have seen the free Edmondsons,—mother, son, and daughter,—the very day after the great era of free life commenced, while yet the inspiration was on them, while the mother's face was all light and love, the father's eyes moistened and glistening with tears, the son calm in conscious manhood and responsibility, the daughter (not more than fifteen years old, I think) smiling a delightful appreciation of joy in the present and hope in the future, thus suddenly and completely unfolded.
Thus have we finished the account of one of the families who were taken on board the Pearl. We have another history to give, to which we cannot promise so fortunate a termination.
CHAPTER VII.
Among those unfortunates guilty of loving freedom too well, was a beautiful young quadroon girl, named Emily Russell, whose mother is now living in New York. The writer has seen and conversed with her. She is a pious woman, highly esteemed and respected, a member of a Christian church.
By the avails of her own industry she purchased her freedom, and also redeemed from bondage some of her children. Emily was a resident of Washington, D. C, a place which belongs not to any state, but to the United States; and there, under the laws of the United States, she was held as a slave. She was of a gentle disposition and amiable manners; she had been early touched with a sense of religious things, and was on the very point of uniting herself with a Christian church; but her heart yearned after her widowed mother and after freedom, and so, on the fatal night when all the other poor victims sought the Pearl, the child Emily went also among them.
How they were taken has already been
