Emily and Mary, who had been at school in New York State, came to the city to meet their mother, and they brought her directly to the Rev. Henry W. Beecher’s house, where the writer then was.
The writer remembers now the scene when she first met this mother and daughters. It must be recollected that they had not seen each other before for four years. One was sitting each side the mother, holding her hand; and the air of pride and filial affection with which they presented her was touching to behold. After being presented to the writer, she again sat down between them, took a hand of each, and looked very earnestly first on one and then on the other; and then, looking up, said, with a smile, “O, these children,—how they do lie round our hearts!”
She then explained to the writer all her sorrows and anxieties for the younger children. “Now, madam,” she says, “that man that keeps the great trading-house at Alexandria, that man,” she said, with a strong, indignant expression, “has sent to know if there’s any more of my children to be sold. That man said he wanted to see me! Yes, ma’am, he said he’d give twenty dollars to see me. I wouldn’t see him, if he’d give me a hundred! He sent for me to come and see him, when he had my daughters in his prison. I wouldn’t go to see him,—I didn’t want to see them there!”
The two daughters, Emily and Mary, here became very much excited, and broke out in some very natural but bitter language against all slave-holders. “Hush, children! you must forgive your enemies,” she said. “But they’re so wicked!” said the girls. “Ah, children, you must hate the sin, but love the sinner.” “Well,” said one of the girls, “mother, if I was taken again and made a slave of, I’d kill myself.” “I trust not, child,—that would be wicked.” “But, mother, I should; I know I never could bear it.” “Bear it, my child?” she answered, “it’s they that bears the sorrow here is they that has the glories there.”
There was a deep, indescribable pathos of voice and manner as she said these words,—a solemnity and force, and yet a sweetness, that can never be forgotten.
This poor slave-mother, whose whole life had been one long outrage on her holiest feelings,—who had been kept from the power to read God’s Word, whose whole pilgrimage had been made one day of sorrow by the injustice of a Christian nation,—she had yet learned to solve the highest problem of Christian ethics, and to do what so few reformers can do,—hate the sin, but love the sinner!
A great deal of interest was excited among the ladies in Brooklyn by this history. Several large meetings were held in different parlors, in which the old mother related her history with great simplicity and pathos, and a subscription for the redemption of the remaining two of her family was soon on foot. It may be interesting to know that the subscription list was headed by the lovely and benevolent Jenny Lind Goldschmidt.
Some of the ladies who listened to this touching story were so much interested in Mrs. Edmondson personally, they wished to have her daguerreotype taken; both that they might be strengthened and refreshed by the sight of her placid countenance, and that they might see the beauty of true goodness beaming there.
She accordingly went to the rooms with them, with all the simplicity of a little child. “O,” said she, to one of the ladies, “you can’t think how happy it’s made me to get here, where everybody is so kind to me! Why, last night, when I went home, I was so happy I couldn’t sleep. I had to go and tell my Saviour, over and over again, how happy I was.”
A lady spoke to her about reading something. “Law bless you, honey! I can’t read a letter.”