Page:Orange Grove.djvu/349

 She no longer doubted the imperative duty of every individual and church organization to set the seal of condemnation on the sin of slavery as a crime of the first magnitude, but instead of being satisfied with this he was going on to embrace heresies that would undermine the foundations of society. This she thought, although not rigid in her religious tenets; but age had somewhat moulded the fresh impulses of her youth into a mild form of conservatism, to which her social position of wealth and influence contributed not a little.

There is always in the wilder and uncultivated mass of society a class ready to be attracted to any novelty that comes up, whether of a moral, dramatic or tragic nature, which gives to the incipient stage of every reform an anomalous, disreputable character, repulsive to the staid habits and fixed principles of a large body of people who would otherwise flock to the same standard, and which excites the derision of a respectable and influential, but superficial order of literary genius. It generally requires a mind of more than ordinary patience of investigation, and of rare independence and strength of will to sift the question so thoroughly as to detect the wheat from the chaff when ready to meet it.

Mrs. Claremont had reached the point where she could recognize the principle that first actuated Walter, but she could not tolerate the "fanatical disorganizers" as they were termed, on the one side; and the low, motley crew on the other, with whom he was thus brought into close communion. She for got that Christ called his followers from the despised