Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe, Florence Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, in two volumes, with portraits and other illustrations: volume 1

[331] its difficulties, is so much better to me in remembrance than anything else I have done here that I must make a little break and pause before I speak of other things.

In this pause I remember my prayer at Puerto Plata, that I and mine might come to this new region with a reverent and teachable spirit. That prayer was an earnest one to me. I hope it has, as all prayers should, accomplished its own fulfilment. I have been here among dear people. I find all the human varieties in this society, not digested and harmonized by noble culture, but existing and asking for the centralizing and discriminating agencies which in civilization sort out the different tastes, characters, and capacities, and assign to each its task, giving devotion its wings and crime its treadmill. This little population in a great country, a country in which Nature allows no one to starve, has lived and so shown its right to live and maintain itself. It has accomplished its political division from a state antipathetic to it, having its dark face turned fixedly towards barbarism [Hayti].

I stood in a little church in the city and island of Santo Domingo, to preach the glad tidings of the gospel of Peace. It was a humble little temple, with a mud floor, and plastered walls, and a roof which scarcely kept out the rain, but it was a place full of comfort to me and to others. The seats and spaces were all filled, for it had no aisles. The small windows and doors were cushioned, so to speak, with human countenances, wearing an expression of curiosity or attention. The way to the church was lined on both sides with the