Page:Women of distinction.djvu/96

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WOMEN OF DISTINCTION.

Some friends took her in; she was pursued and found. Rather than have her go back into slavery a friend paid twenty dollars for her services and five dollars for her child the remainder of that year, after which she was indeed free. Now homeless and friendless, in search of a child that had been, in this time, stolen by cruel hands and sold, night came on and she, a traveling stranger, was taken in by a Quaker family. As Mrs. Titus says, "They gave her lodgings for the night; and it is very amusing to hear her tell of the 'nice, high, clean, white, beautiful bed' assigned her to sleep in, which contrasted so strangely with her former pallets that she sat down and contemplated it, perfectly absorbed in wonder that such a bed should have been appropriated to one like herself For some time she thought that she would lie down beneath it, on her usual bedstead, the floor. 'I did, indeed,' says she, laughing heartily at her former self. However, she finally concluded to make use of the bed, for fear that not to do so might injure the feelings of her good hostess." She subsequently moved to New York City, and having already become a Christian, she united with the John Street Methodist Church and afterwards joined the Zion's Church in Church Street, in which was a large number of colored people. She entered heartily into the cause of a moral reformation which was being carried on among the degraded classes of women. In this she did much earnest work, even entering dens of wicked women where her comrades were rather too timid to enter. She, by strict economy, had deposited some of her earnings in. the savings bank;