At the same time, she was serving with equal fidelity and ability the College whose advancement had so long been one of the chief interests of her life. For nineteen years she had been one of its Professors, for six years Dean of the Faculty, and for four years a member of its Board of Corporators. She lived long enough to see the fruits of her labors, and to foresee to some extent the position which both College and Hospital would hold in the medical world. And when, after her death, her will was published, the friends of the College and Hospital found that both institutions had been remembered by endowments.
Almost contemporary in length of days with the Medical College is another useful institution, The Philadelphia School of Design for Women, which began its corporate existence the first Monday of November, 1853. There had previously been a class for women in connection with the Franklin Institute, and this school was its further development. It was mainly supported by contributions, the scholars' fees paying merely for the coal, gas, and other necessaries of the house. The management of the institution was vested in a Board of twelve Directors, elected annually, and a Board of twelve Lady Managers, elected by the Board of Directors at the first stated meeting after the election; these ladies disburse the money received at the school, and also that appropriated monthly by the Directors. It is noticeable in the first report of the School of Design for Women, that men held the leading positions and received the highest salaries, but that has since been changed.
That there was no organized action in this State, no woman suffrage association formed, until after the war, was undoubtedly due to the fact that the same women were prominent in both the anti-slavery and woman's rights movements. And as Pennsylvania bordered on three slave States, the escape of fugitives and their innumerable trials in the courts, just as the whole system was on the eve of dissolution, compelled the Philadelphia friends to incessant vigilance in the care and concealment of the unhappy victims. Thus their hands and thoughts were wholly occupied until the first gun at Sumter proclaimed freedom in the United States.
For collecting many of the facts contained in this chapter we are indebted to Julia and Rachel Foster, daughters of Heron Foster, who founded The Pittsburgh Dispatch. What an inspiring vision it would have been to the earnest women sitting in that Convention in 1854, could they in imagination have stretched forward to the bright winter days of 1881, and seen these two young girls tastefully attired, enthusiastic in the cause of woman's suffrage, tripping through the streets of Philadelphia, paper and pencil in hand, intent on some important errand, now here, now there, climbing up long flights of stairs into the offices of the various journals, to find out from the records what Lucretia Mott, Frances Dana Gage, and Ernestine L. Rose had said over a quarter of a century before, about the rights and wrongs of women. Turning over the dusty journals hour after hour as they copied page by page, it would have been a pleasing study to watch their earnest faces, now sad, now pleased, reflecting with every changing sentiment they read the feelings of their souls, just as their diamonds paled and glowed in the changing light.
Could the satisfaction of these girls in reading Garrison's stern logic, Mrs. Mott's repartee and earnest appeal, and all the arguments by which their opponents had been fairly vanquished; could the new-born dignity they realized in the conscious possession of rights and liberties once unknown, confident that full equality could not be long deferred; could all this have been pre-visioned by the actors in those scenes, they would have felt themselves fully compensated for the persecution and ridicule they had endured. And thus the great work of life goes on; the toils of one generation are the joys of the next. We have reaped what other hands have planted; let us then in turn sow bountifully for those who shall follow us, that our children may enter into a broader inheritance than any legal parchment can bequeath.
ANGELINA GRIMKÉ.
Reminiscences by E. C. S.
My first introduction to Mrs. Weld was two years after her marriage, when she and her husband had retired from the stormy scenes of the anti-slavery conflict, and in their own home found a harbor of rest, for quiet though useful occupation. In company with my husband and Charles Stuart, a Scotch Abolitionist, we took one of those long closely-covered stages peculiar to New Jersey, for a twelve miles drive to Belleville, where at the door of an old Dutch-built stone house, Theodore Weld and the famous daughters of South Carolina gave us a welcome. There was nothing attractive at first sight in those plain, frail women, except their rich voices, fluent language, and Angelina's fine dark eyes. The house with its wide hall, spacious apartments, deep windows, and small panes of glass was severely destitute of all tasteful, womanly touches, and though neat and orderly, had a cheerless atmosphere. Neither was there one touch of the artistic in the arrangement of the ladies' hair and dresses. They were just then in the Graham dispensation, and the peculiar table arrangements, with no tray to mark the charmed circle whence the usual beverages were dispensed, the cold dishes without a whiff of heat, or steam, gave one a feeling of strangeness; all those delightful associations gathering round a covered dish and hot beefsteak, the tea-pot and china cups and saucers, were missing. A cool evening in the month of May, after a long drive had left us in a condition peculiarly susceptible to the attractions of something hot and stimulating; but they came not. There was no catering in this household to the weaknesses of those who were not yet weaned from the flesh-pots of Egypt. The sharp edge of our appetite somewhat dulled with the simple fare, we were thrown on our own resources, and memories of tea and coffee for stimulus.
After our repast, the high discourse was slightly interrupted by the appearance of the infant, Charles Stuart Weld, and his formal presentation to the distinguished gentleman after whom he was named. And when Mr. Weld told us how near the boy, in the initiative steps of his existence, came to being sacrificed to a theory, the old stone walls rang with bursts of laughter.74 But the chilling environments of these noble people were modified by the sincere hospitality with which we were received. My husband and Mr. Weld had been classmates in Lane Seminary, and were among the students who left that institution when the discussion of the slavery question was forbidden by the President, Dr. Lyman Beecher. They talked with zest of those early days until a late hour. As Charles Stuart and the two sisters were also good conversationalists, I listened with pleasure and profit, and during the three days under that roof obtained much general knowledge of anti-slavery and church history; volumes of information were condensed in those familiar talks, of lasting benefit to me, who then knew so little of reforms.
How changed was the atmosphere of that home to me next day. True, there were still no pictures on the walls, but the beautiful boy in his bath, the sunlight on his golden hair, with some new grace or trick each day, surpassed what any brush could trace. No statues graced the corners; but the well-built Northern hero of many slavery battles, bound with the silken cords of love and friendship to those brave women from the South, together sacrificing wealth and fame and ease for a great principle, formed a group worthy the genius of a Rogers to portray.
It has been my good fortune to meet these noble friends occasionally in the course of our busy lives, sometimes under their roof, sometimes under mine, and as, day by day, the nobility, the transparency, the unselfishness of their characters have grown upon me, the memories of the old stone house and its care-worn inmates, have stood transfigured before