free, for Lincoln's proclamation had sounded the death knell to the cursed institution at the door of every slave-holder. The door had opened and the light had shone in. Who can tell the millions of hearts that leaped for joy? Praise God, the war ended, the slaves are free, and now the burdens of education and justice before the law fall upon the shoulders of this great and good woman.
How shall I best elevate them and how shall they get their rights? seemed to have been two of the questions that now confronted Mrs. Harper. She set out and for a good part of several years traveled through the South, visited them in their homes and speaking to them from the public rostrum, and never, through fear of any consequence whatever, allowed herself to disappoint an audience.
In joke a friend wrote her from Philadelphia as to her being bought out by the Rebels. She replied as follows: "Now in reference to being bought by Rebels and becoming a Johnsonite, I hold that between the white people and the colored there is a community of interests, and the sooner they find it out the better it will be for both parties; but that community of interests does not consist in increasing the privileges of one class and curtailing the rights of the other, but in getting every citizen interested in the welfare, progress and durability of the State. I do not, in lecturing, confine myself to the political side of the question. While I am in favor of universal suffrage, yet I know that the colored man needs something more than a vote in his hand; he needs to know the value of a home-life; to rightly appre-
