478 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



whole winter. Mrs. Brown said, they had no money with which to pay postage, except 

 a tiny treasury wliich the younger girls had earned for that express object, during the 

 previous summer, by picking berries for a neighbor three miles off.* 



"The reason of these privations simply was that it costs money to live in Kansas, in 

 ' adherence to the cause of freedom ' (see the tombstone inscription again), biit not so 

 much to live at North Elba, and therefore the women must stint themselves that the 

 men might continue their Kansas work ; but when the father came upon his visits, he 

 ne\'er came empty handed, but brought a little money — some plain household stores, 

 flour, sugar, rice, salt fish ; tea and coffee they do not use. But what their standard of 

 expense is may be seen from the fact that Mrs. Brown seemed to speak as if her 

 youngest widowed daughter was not totally and absolutely destitute, because her 

 husband had left a property of five sheep, which would belong to her. These sheep, 

 I found on inquiry, were worth at that place and season $2 a piece: a child of sixteen, 

 left a widow in the workl, with an estate amounting to $10! The immediate financial 

 anxieties of Mrs. Brown herself seemed chiefly to relate to a certain formidable tax 

 bill, due at New Year's time ; if they could only weather ///rr/, all was clear for the 

 immediate future. 



" How much was it, I asked, rather surprised that that wild country should 

 produce a high rate of taxation. It was from $8 to $10, she gravely said ; and 

 she had put by $10 for the purpose, but had occasion to lend most of it to a poor 

 black woman, with no great hope of payment ; and one of the first things done by 

 her husband, on recovering his money in Virginia, was to send her, through me, $15, 

 to make sure of that tax bill. 



" I see, on looking back, how bare and ine.xpressive this hasty narrative is; but I 

 could not bear to suffer such a privilege as this visit to pass away unrecorded. I spent 

 but one night at the house, and drove away with Mrs. Brown, in the early frosty 

 morning, from the breezy mountain homfe which her husband loved (as one of them 

 told me) ' because he seemed to think there was something romantic in that kind of 

 scenery.' 



"There was, indeed, always a sort of thrill in John Brown's voice when he 

 spoke of mountains. I shall never forget the quiet way in which he once told me ' that 

 God had established the Alleghany Mountains from the foundation of the world, that 

 they might one day be a refuge for fugitive slaves.' I did not then know that his 

 own home was among the Adirondacks. 



" Just before we went, I remember I said something or other to Salmon Brown 

 about the sacrifices of their family, and he looked up in a quiet, manly way, which I 



* At that time there w ;re very few summer visitors in the Adirondacks, and none in the vicinity 

 of North Elba. 



