Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/308

298 Only their journeying southward instead of northward saved them from capture.

The life at the farm during this time was curious. Anderson says: "There was no milk and water sentimentality—no offensive contempt for the Negro, while working in his cause; the pulsations of each and every heart beat in harmony for the suffering and pleading slave. I thank God that I have been permitted to realize to its furthest, fullest extent, the moral, mental, physical, social harmony of an anti-slavery family, carrying out to the letter the principles of its antitype, the anti-slavery cause. In John Brown's house, and in John Brown's presence, men from widely different parts of the continent met and united into one company, wherein no hateful prejudice dared intrude its ugly self—no ghost of distinction found space to enter. . ..

"To a passer-by, the house and its surroundings presented but indifferent attractions. Any log tenement of equal dimensions would be as likely to arrest a stray glance. Rough, unsightly, and aged, it was only for those privileged to enter and tarry for a long time, and to penetrate the mysteries of the two rooms it contained—kitchen, parlor, dining-room below, and the spacious chamber, attic, store-room, prison, drilling-room, comprised in the loft above—who could tell how we lived at Kennedy Farm.

"Every morning, when the noble old man was at home, he called the family around, read from his