``Those were heroic days,'' he says,
quietly. ``And once in a while my father let me
go with him. They were wonderful night drives--
the cowering slaves, the darkness of the road,
the caution and the silence and dread of it all.''
This underground route, he remembers, was from
Philadelphia to New Haven, thence to Springfield,
where Conwell's father would take his charge,
and onward to Bellows Falls and Canada.
Conwell tells, too, of meeting Frederick
Douglass, the colored orator, in that little cottage in
the hills. `` `I never saw my father,' Douglass said
one day--his father was a white man--`and I
remember little of my mother except that once
she tried to keep an overseer from whipping me,
and the lash cut across her own face, and her
blood fell over me.'
``When John Brown was captured,'' Conwell
went on, ``my father tried to sell this place to
get a little money to send to help his defense.
But he couldn't sell it, and on the day of the execu-
tion we knelt solemnly here, from eleven to twelve,
just praying, praying in silence for the passing
soul of John Brown. And as we prayed we knew
that others were also praying, for a church-bell
tolled during that entire hour, and its awesome
boom went sadly sounding over these hills.
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