Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-10-20
OLD ABOLITION GRIT.
What II Cost to be an Anti-Slavery
Man Before the Rebellion.
RIsKING LIVES FOR PRINCIPLES,
Some of the Old Spirit Needed to Cope With
the Evils Of To-Day.
oNEsLIM WOMAN WITH A BIG REVOLVER
WRITTEN FOR THE D1spAroH.

WRITTEN FOR THE DIsPATCH.i
Happening in Boston of a Monday morn
| ing lately, there seemed more than the usual
crowd about the doors of fremont Temple.
| Not that a crowd about the doors of that
ancient lecture building is ever unusual,
for there is always woman's meeting, or a
Bible class, or an antl-poverty meeting, or a
reading by popular school of oratory, or
something progressive, to take the time. un-
| til there are hardly halt days and even
| ings enough in a week for the engage
ments offering. But thSs time the line be-
gan around the block and wound through
the dim Railways of the interior, and it
wasn't suffrage faces or Bible class faces
either. One can tell by the quality of the
faces in the narrow streets what agitation
possesses Boston fol: the day. whether it is
the horticultural crowd, or a spirituallst
convention, or an art students league, or a
literary luncheon up Beacon Hill way. 1t
is one of the courtesies allowed in Boston to
ask questions OF the next neighbor, known
or unknown, provided always you don't ask
for curiosity, but because you want to knowI
"Will you tell me what those people are
here for?" asked Of lady leaving the
line, and she forthwith said agreeably that
they were buying tickets for the new lecture
course, the sale of which opened that MORN
ing.
This, you know, is one of the institutions
OF Boston, and its constituencies throughout
the Union, since the memory of man run
meth not to the contrary, though believe it
was not heard of be ore Bunker Hill. 1t is
not the old lyceum course, but an entertain-
ment course, the great source of Puritan dis
sipation, for with its lectures, humorous,
historic, descriptive. it gives those whose
principles do not allow theaters chance to
hear favorite actors in readings and opera
singers in concerts. Here Max Alvary, the
angelic hero of Tannhauser, was first heard
as a concert singer, and won the enthusiasm
which led to his success in New York opera.
For 81 a season ticket, one has twenty en-
tertainments of choice sort, and Is the
great chance of anything like artistic diver
sion and social outlook for thousands OF
people. So it is no wonder that working
girls club together, and art students save
money, and teachers bribe big boys to go for
them, and plain people give up day to
waiting to secure tickets, the best of which
are gone before 10 o'clock. The lady further
said that man in the line near her applied
at the door Sunday midnight, but was not
admitted until o'clock. The young men
and women, the kindly, care-faced matrons,
the plain, elderly fathers, sat patiently
along the inner corridors far in to the after
noon, and people were still buying at 6
o'clock.
WHAT FREEDOM COST.
For I, too, whose byword is that life is
short, gave up that valued "library Mon
day" to fremont Temple, and went again
in the evening till past IL o'clock. Only
three times before in eight years had the
occasion been enough to tempt me to endure
the horrors of bad air and broken strength
following night assembly. But the pIa-
card at the door, Meeting of the Old Abo-
litionists," on Emancipation Day, for the
first time in % years, stayed my steps. The
kindly-faced man with white satin badge
at the door asked, Are you an
abolitionist?" and he seemed satis-
fed with the answer which said
else with six generations of revolutionary
blood in my veins, of men who fought for
kirk and covenant on the border, with King
James in the Irish struggles, and next
Cromwell, who were wounded at Ticonde-
roga, Corinth, Donelson and through the
captivity at Andersonville? That lessened
gathering of the rank and file of the old
abolitionists held faces which told plainly
of what race they sprang, even of the men
who faced the Armada and sailed from Ley
den. Itwas gallery of historical portraits.
startling in fidelity of type, of heads that
only needed ruff and short cloak to be Puri-
tans more like than any of Boughton's pic
lures, Elizabethan faces. scholarly and fine,
harsher Ironsides good at fighting, and
the gentler pilgrim sort who yet
dared adventure and peril, as these their
descendants had done after them. Boys and
girls, go to your histories and learn OF what
sort of men you came and how to be worthy
of them. Teachers, give your half-grown
lads and girls passages from Swinburne's
Armada, in whose lofty song for freedom
he redeems unworthier verse, to learn how
..Hell for Spain and heaven for England-God
to God and man to man,
Met confronted, light with darkness life with
DEATH"
Let follow that second volume of Stedman's
American Literature, which records colonial
sufferings for conscience in word, and which
shall move hearts forever; and then in place
of fabulous gorilla hunting and juvenile
archaeology, give them such true adventures
as our own day has to show in Charles
Kingsley's sketch of John Brown, the most
beautiful chapter of our country's history
vet written, in its perfection of literary |
style, with other half forgotten passages of
daring for freedoms sake; and finally John |
McElroy's inimitable 'Story Of Anderson |
Vile" In such reading they may slake
their thirst for adventure and learn what |
freedom in our time cost, and to what cruelty |
injustice ever tends. Such teaching makes |
good citizens and Union men.
PERsEcUTING ABoLITIoNIsTs.
The meeting, have said, was of the rank
and file of the abolitionists, the men who
paid the money and did the work, mostly. |
The names most widely advertised with the
freedom movement were conspicuous by
their absence. Colonel Higginson was not
there, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe was not. or
the suffragists generally. General Butler
sent an excuse, and Fred Douglass was just |
off on his mission to Hayti. One would |
think they might have attended the first |
abolition meeting in % years out |
of politeness to their own principles. !
They were absent, but not missed. |
There was less burning of joss
stick than would have been required in |
the presence of some of these. and other |
speakers, feeling free of utterance, spoke