So Sallie had told me her history; but she had not done.  Her active mind had found an outlet in the little negro church at Cincinnati, of which she was a member.  Her intense religious enthusiasm mingled with her deep perception of the wrongs and cruelties inflicted upon her race.  Her soul lay like a glowing volcano beneath that easy, careless Southern manner, which might have led one at first to regard her as merely a jolly, ignorant, negro-woman.

At a word which one day touched upon this chord, her work fell from her hands, her eyes flashed, and she poured forth, in old Scripture phraseology, her indignation, her aspirations, and her glowing faith.  She wholly identified her race with the Jews in their wanderings and their captivity, and the old descriptive and prophetic words fell from her lips, as if wrung from her heart, startling one by the wondrous fitness of the application.  There was such magnetic power in her intense earnestness, her strong emotions, and her certain and exultant trust in God and his providence, that it held me spell-bound.  I listened, as if one of the old prophets had risen before me.  I never heard eloquence like it; for I never witnessed such an intense sense of the reality and force of the cause which had called it forth.  I can not recall her words; but I remember, after describing the cruelty and apparent hopelessness of her people’s captivity, their groans, their prayers to the Lord, day after day and year after year, their darkness and despair, their still-continued crying unto God for help, she concluded by describing how the Lord at length would appear for their relief.  ’He will come,’ she said; ’he will shake and shake the nations, and will say:  ‘Let my people go free.’  And though there should seem to be no way, he shall open the way before them, and they shall go forth free.  They shall sing and give thanks, for in the Lord have they trusted, and they shall never be confounded.’  She paused.  Her words made a deep impression upon me.  At that time, how dark and hopeless seemed the way! nothing then pointed to a coming deliverance.  Blind faith in God alone was left us; but how cold seemed the faith and trust of the warmest advocate of Emancipation among us, to the glowing certainty of God’s help, which possessed the soul of this poor, ignorant negro-woman.  Sallie took up her shawl and bonnet, and was about to go.  I roused myself, and looking at her with a half-smile, ‘You speak in church?’ I said.

An instant change passed over her face.  Her eyes twinkled a moment, with a shrewd appreciation of my guess.  She drew herself up, with a gleam of pride and pleasure; she nodded an assent, and wrapping her shawl around her, she turned away.

I have never seen her since; but her truly prophetic words often recur to me now, when the Lord is shaking the nations; when, if we fail to listen to his words, and to let his poor, oppressed people go, he must surely shake and shake again.  Every day, our concern in the negro race becomes a clearer and more self-evident fact.  Every bulletin impresses it anew upon our thoughts.  Every soldier laid to rest upon the battle-field engraves it still deeper upon the nation’s heart.