Rhoda of the Underground

by Florence Finch Kelly

“Then I wouldn’t have you for my bridesmaid if you couldn’t give your eyes a rest that long,” rejoined Rhoda gaily.

Spring and summer came and went, and for Rhoda Ware the weeks passed with uneventful flow. Through their house there trickled a thin stream of slaves fleeing northward, sometimes half a dozen or more within a week and sometimes not more than one or two. The trouble and cost of recovering their runaway negroes, even when they were infrequently able to get possession of them again, had caused the southern slaveholders to give over their efforts. In these last years of the decade it was unusual for a fugitive to be pursued and therefore the traffic of the Underground was carried on with little risk.

Rhoda busied herself with these duties, the ordering of her father’s household, her anti-slavery work and her reading. Gradually the thought grew up in her breast that she would like to study medicine. She talked the matter over with her father and he offered, if she wished, to send her to one of the medical colleges that within a few years had been opened for women. But she would not leave him alone and so, under his guidance, she spent her leisure time reading in his medical library, discussing his cases with him, and often going with him upon his visits.

Dr. Ware received an occasional brief letter from John Brown in which his scheme was referred to with cautious phrasing as a speculation in sheep. Toward midsummer he wrote that he was getting his shepherds together and expected to collect a band of sheep in the Virginia mountains, where he thought there would be good pasturage, about the middle of October.

“He is bound to come into collision with the federal government very soon,” said Dr. Ware to his daughter as they talked this letter over together. “Of course he knows that will be the end of his enterprise and of him too.”

“He won’t care,” answered Rhoda, “what becomes of him if he can make just one thrust at slavery.”

“That’s true. And the more I think of it the more I believe that even if he fails in his first attempt, as he is very likely to do, it will be a good strong thrust that will make the South fairly stagger. I told him I’d wait to see whether or not he made a beginning before I decided about joining him. But I doubt very much, Rhoda, whether you and I will have a chance to work under John Brown.”

“I’ll be ready to go whenever you say the word, father,” she said with grave earnestness.

Now and then a letter passed between Rhoda and Jefferson Delavan, a letter of intimate friendliness, telling of personal matters and mutual interests. Once only did he touch upon the slavery question, which formerly they had argued with such earnestness, and then he filled a long letter with an endeavor to prove to her that the negro race had been benefited by slavery, that in taking it from its barbarous state and bringing it in contact with civilization the slaveholders had lifted it to a higher plane of moral and intellectual life.

When she replied she said merely, “No more of that, please, if you still love me! Each of us knows that the other’s convictions are honest and deeply rooted. We can’t agree, so let’s not argue, but just enjoy our friendship.”