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Copyright, 1884, by Frances C. Sparhawk.
EDITOR'S TABLE.
Evidences are constantly multiplying that American history is a subject which has not lost its interest to investigators or to readers. During the past month four distinct works, namely, the fifth volume of Von Holst's Constitutional History of the United States, the third of Schouler's History of the United States, the second of McMaster's History of the People of the United States, and also a new volume of Hubert Howe Bancroft's History of the Pacific States, have been published, and are destined, no doubt, to take their places as "standards." This diligence on the part of their respective writers, and the interest in them manifested by the great public is commendable, and in a measure dispels the oft-repeated saying that Americans are a nation of novel-readers.
It is gratifying, also, to record another fact. During the third week in July the Old South lectures for young people, illustrative of "The War for the Union," were inaugurated in Boston. The ancient "meeting-house" was crowded with earnest students to hear the first lecture on slavery, delivered by William Lloyd Garrison, Jr. The speaker gave a vivid sketch of the chief events of the anti-slavery movement, and of the part taken by George Thompson, Garrison, Phillips, Whittier, and Harriet Martineau.
Students of the anti-slavery struggle should not forget, however, how much the success of that struggle was due to Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman, whose death occurred at Weymouth, Mass., on July 12. She was not only a magna pars of the struggle, but one of the most remarkable women of our time. Mrs. Maria Child used to relate how Mrs. Chapman, clad in the height of fashion of that day, came into the first anti-slavery fair, an entire stranger to every one present. "She looked around over the few tables, scantily supplied, and stopped by some faded artificial flowers. The poor commodity only indicated the utter poverty of means to carry on the work. We thought her a spy, or maybe she was a slave-holder." From that time she entered heartily into the work. She became the life of the Female Anti-slavery Society in Boston, she spoke often in public; her pen was never idle when it could advance the cause of equal rights and freedom.
Mr. Lowell, in his rhymed letter, descriptive of an anti-slavery bazaar at Faneuil Hall, and the celebrities of the cause there assembled, drew the portrait of this gifted woman with his usual felicitous touch:—