474 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



" I had left the world outside, to raise the latch of this humble door amid the 

 mountains ; and now my pen falters on the threshold, as my steps did then. This 

 house is a home of sacred sorrow. How shall we enter it ? Its inmates are bereft and 

 ruined men and women, as the world reckons; what can we say to them? Do not 

 shrink ; you are not near the world ; you are near John Brown's household. ' In 

 the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer: they have overcome 

 the world.' 



"Having had the honor of Captain Brown's acquaintance for some years, I was 

 admitted into the confidence of the family, though I could see them observing me 

 somewhat suspiciously as I approached the door. Every thing that was said of the 

 absent father and husband bore testimony of the same simple, upright character. 

 Though they had been much separated from him for the last few years, they all felt 

 it to be a necessary absence, and had not only no complaint to make, but cordially 

 approved it. Mrs. Brown had been always the sharer of his plans, ' My husband 

 always believed,' she said, 'that he was to be an instrument in the hands of Providence, 

 and I believe it too.' 'This plan has occupied his thought and prayers for twenty 

 years.' 'Many a night has he lain awake and prayed concerning it.' 'Even now,' she 

 did not doubt, 'he feels satisfied, because he thinks it will be overruled by Provi- 

 dence for the best.' 'For myself,' she said, 'I have always prayed that my husband 

 might be killed in fight rather than fall alive into the hands of the slaveholders; but 

 I can not regret it now, in view of the noble words of P'reedom which it has been 

 his privilege to utter.' When, the next day, on the railway, I was compelled to put 

 into her hands the newspaper containing the death warrant of her husband, I felt no 

 fears of her exposing herself to observation by any undue excitement. She read it, 

 and then the tall, strong woman bent her head for a few minutes on the seat before 

 us ; then she raised it, and spoke calmly as before. 



"I thought that I had learned the lesson once for all in Kansas, which no one ever 

 learns from books of history alone, of the readiness with which danger and death fit 

 into the ordinary grooves of daily life, so that on a day of a battle, for instance, all 

 may go on as usual ; breakfast and dinner are provided, children cared for, and all 

 external existence has the same smoothness that one observes at Niagara, just above 

 the American Fall; but it impressed me anew on visiting this household at this time. 

 Here was a family out of which four noble young men had, within a fortnight, been 

 killed. I say nothing of a father under sentence of death and a brother fleeing for his 

 life, but only speak of those killed. Now that word killed is a word which one hardly 

 cares to mention in a mourning household circle, even under all mitigating circum- 

 stances, when sad, unavailing kisses and tender funeral rites have softened the last 

 memories ; how much less here, then, where it suggested not merely wounds, and 



