Report of the Twentieth National Anti-Slavery Bazaar

OF THE
TWENTIETH NATIONAL
BOSTON:
J. B. YERRINTON & SON, PRINTERS
1854.
The brightness of the New Year of 1854 did not fall without its shadows on the community of which we make a part. The storm of the 28th and 29th of December, unprecedented in severity, for many years, had brought to some homes actual bereavement or severe pecuniary loss, to many, serious annoyance, inconvenience and anxiety, and to all, that subduing, saddening influence which is experienced, however temporarily, when any “great outrages of weather” unsettle the thoughtless security as to life and safety, that usually pervades the public mind. For several days, the mails were stopped, and almost all communication with the environs of Boston cut off. When tidings could arrive, and nearly every hour brought fresh intelligence of peril, disaster or shipwreck, and the very aspect of nature herself seemed redolent of melancholy suggestion, it certainly would not be unnatural if, in some minds, the whole coloring of thought assumed a graver and more sober hue. This has been the case with ourselves. The Bazaar of 1853 has closed with what we are entitled, in our circumstances, to estimate as brilliant success , the receipts being four thousand two hundred and fifty-six dollars; and yet we feel impelled to a more thoughtful and serious train of remark than may, at first view, appear natural or appropriate. To the minds of most persons, the mention of a Ladies’ Bazaar suggests ideas of a purely gay and festal character; of an occasion, where it is well if the gaiety and festivity do not degenerate into mere thoughtlessness and frivolity. How it may be in Bazaars designed for the support of popular charities, we are unable to say; but, when we are speaking of one whose funds are devoted to the sustentation of the American Anti-Slavery Society, we assure all who are willing to listen, that ours is grave work, performed in any but a thoughtless and irresponsible spirit.
Let us recal, for a moment, the written records of thought and feeling that accompany the exquisite and beautiful donations of which the Bazaar is made up. These latter suggest only ideas of taste, and skill, and elegant leisure, and abundant wealth; and the looker-on can hardly do else than associate such brightness of coloring and harmony of tint, with the glow of health and happiness. But with these suggestions, do the facts accord? Far from it. From the homes of actual poverty, from young girls painfully earning their own bread, and yet saving something to purchase the material that shall be fashioned into the gay clothing, never to be worn for their own decoration, from the chambers of sickness and languor, and hopeless disease, from Asylums for the Blind, from schools that charity has established for the help of the wholly indigent,—​it is from sources like these, that very great and valuable assistance is obtained. True, the gifts of the happy and the prosperous are here also; the glittering ornament, that has graced many a gay pageant; the exquisite picture, in which the painter has made real his happiest conception, or recalled some favorite scene; the admired and successful volume, fresh from the hands of its author. The minister of religion, the philosopher, the artist, and the poet, have given us of their best, have freely contributed that spiritual and ideal wealth, whose price is above rubies. But all these gifts, however diverse their source, come to us with words of the most earnest encouragement, with assurances of exhaustless sympathy, and promises of continued support. Much of the help thus given, by deed and word, is sent from other lands. To the moral beauty of the contribution, it adds not a little, in our eyes, that such is the case. The fact itself furnishes a most invigorating testimony to the truth of the principle on which the Anti-Slavery enterprise is based. By a spontaneous conviction, overmastering nationalities, and usage, and creed, and language, men differing world-wide in all beside, are laboring together in the promulgation of the cardinal doctrine of our Anti-Slavery creed, that under no conceivable circumstances , can one man hold another as goods and chattels.