Clarkson, To His Last Day, Never Ceased To Be Interested In The
Subject, And Took The Warmest Interest In All Movements For The
Abolition Of Slavery In America.
At the Ipswich depot we were met by a venerable lady, the daughter of
Clarkson's associate, William Dillwyn.
She seemed overjoyed to meet
us, and took us at once into her carriage, and entertained us all our
way to the hall by anecdotes and incidents of Clarkson and his times.
She read me a manuscript letter from him, written at a very advanced
age, in which he speaks with the utmost ardor and enthusiasm of the
first antislavery movements of Cassius M. Clay in Kentucky. She
described him to me as a cheerful, companionable being, frank and
simple-hearted, and with a good deal of quiet humor.
It is remarkable of him that, with such intense feeling for human
suffering as he had, and worn down and exhausted as he was by the
dreadful miseries and sorrows with which he was constantly obliged to
be familiar, he never yielded to a spirit of bitterness or
denunciation.
The narrative which he gives is as calm and unimpassioned, and as free
from any trait of this kind, as the narratives of the evangelists.
Thus riding and talking, we at last arrived at the hall.
The old stone house, the moat, the draw bridge, all spoke of days of
violence long gone by, when no man was safe except within fortified
walls, and every man's house literally had to be his castle.
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