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Angelina's answer to this ended the discussion. She declared that as her mind was made up to go, she could not ask leave of her Society that it would grieve her to have to leave it, and it would be unpleasant to be disowned, but she had no alternative.
At this time of her life, ere a single sorrow had thrown its shadow across her heart, and all her tears were shed for other's woes, we see very distinctly Angelina's peculiar characteristics. Her conscientiousness and her pride are especially conspicuous.
A bank of clouds had swallowed the last vestige of ruddy light. The mountain peaks darkened. It was growing night. "We'll wait for moonlight," said Johnny Byrd. But at that Maria Angelina's eyes came away from those mountains which she was unremittingly watching for an answering fire and fixed themselves upon his face in startled horror. "Moonlight!" she gasped. "But no no!
In the love of the blessed Gospel of God's Son, I remain, thy afflicted sister. The entry in Sarah's diary respecting this incident is as follows. The date is two days before that of Angelina's letter to her.
It was when you saw she was opening some secret record of her own experience that the painful silence and breathless interest told the deep effect and lasting impression her words were making." We have not Angelina's account of this meeting, but referring to it in a letter to Sarah Douglass, she says: "My heart never quailed before, but it almost died within me at that tremendous hour."
And the young people at the Lodge had a way of gathering in the dark upon the wide steps and strumming chords and warbling strange strains about intimate emotions. And as Maria Angelina's voice rose with the rest her gift was discovered. "Gosh, the little Wop's a Galli-Curci," was John Byrd's aside to Bob.
Wendell Phillips says: "I can never forget the impulse our cause received when those two sisters doubled our hold on New England in 1837 and 1838, and made a name, already illustrious in South Carolina by great services, equally historical in Massachusetts, in the two grandest movements of our day." Angelina's eloquence must have been something marvellous.
By all this it will be seen that Angelina was regarded as too precious a jewel in the crown of the Church to be relinquished without a struggle. But satisfied as was her conscience, Angelina's natural feelings could not be immediately stifled. Though not so sensitive or so affectionate as Sarah, she was quite as proud, and valued as greatly the good opinion of her family and friends.
How gently it falls through the soft air, always tending downwards, but sliding softly, from side to side, wavering, hesitating, balancing, until it settles as noiselessly as a snow-flake upon the all-receiving bosom of the earth! Just such would have been the fate of poor Angelina's fluttering effort, if you had left it to itself.
Writing to Jane Smith in 1852, she says: "I chide myself that I am not happier than I am, surrounded by so many blessings, but there are times when I feel as though the sun of earthly bliss had set for me. I know not what would have become of me but for Angelina's children. They have strewed my solitary path with flowers, and gemmed my sky with stars.
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