As the sufferer’s wound, in natural course, became offensive, the care of it could not but have been disagreeable as well as toilsome; and the feeble health of one of the sisters at that time must have made heavier the burden to be borne.  But it was borne with a cheerful constancy.  In a letter which Grace Anna wrote after she had attended for some time in person to the patient, with the care and sympathy which his condition demanded, and begun to feel her strength unequal to the task, in addition to her household duties, she asked a friend in Philadelphia to procure for her a trusty colored woman fit to be a helper in the work, offering higher wages than were common in that region for the services required, and adding that, indeed, they could not stand upon the amount of pay, but must have help, if it could be obtained, though not in a condition to bear undue expenditure.  But, she said, the man “is unable to be removed; and if he were not, I know of no place where the charge would not be equally severe.”  So, in perfect keeping with her character, she just quietly regarded it as a matter of course that it should still continue where it was.  And there it did continue until spring, when the man, now able to bear removal, was conveyed to the writer, and, after a time, went thence to Boston.  There his foot, pronounced incurable, was amputated, and the abolitionists supplied him with a wooden limb.  He then returned and spent another winter with the Lewises, assisting in the household work, and rendering services invaluable at a time when it was almost impossible to obtain female help.  The next spring, hoping vainly to recover in a warmer climate from the disease induced by the drain his wounded foot had made upon his system, he went to Hayti, and there died; happy, we may well believe, to have escaped from slavery, though only to have won scarely two years of freedom as an invalid and a cripple.

The sisters were so thoroughly united in their work, as well as in all the experiences of life, that this brief sketch has not attempted what indeed it could not have achieved—­a separation of their spheres of beneficent activity.  Yet they had each her individual traits and adaptations to their common task; “diversities of gifts, but the same spirit.”  Elizabeth, although for many years shut out by feeble health from any part requiring much bodily exertion, was ever a wise counsellor, as well as ready with such help as her state of health would warrant.  Though weak in body, in spirit she was strong and calm and self-reliant, with a clear, discriminating intellect, a keen sense of right, and a certain solidity and balanced symmetry of the spiritual nature which made her an appreciable power wherever she was known.  Of Mariann, Grace Anna says, that if a flash of inspiration was required, it usually came from her.  Taught by her love for others, and by a sensitiveness almost preternaturally quick, “she always knew exactly the right thing to