The interview, as the parents and relatives of Miss King understood it,
was to be held to the intent that Miss King might then and there in
person, and by "word" more effectually than she could possibly do by
writing, absolve herself from all engagement, obligation or intention
whatsoever to marry me--now, hereafter, or evermore. This was their
construction of the matter, and it was in the light of this construction
that they essayed to grant the request--the granting of which Miss King
made the condition on which she proposed to yield up her sacred right.
That the King family--determined as they were, law or no law, justice or
no justice, Christianity or no Christianity; in short, at all events and
all hazards, to prevent our union--should have granted this interview to
Miss King convicts them of as great imbecility and folly as was their
persecution of their victim. But so it is, the innocent shall not only
not be cut down, but they who practice unrighteousness shall themselves
be overtaken.
But to the interview. I should be glad to describe my feelings on first
meeting Miss King after she had passed through that fiery furnace of
affliction. But I desist. The "engagement," I have already said,
displayed a moral heroism which no one can comprehend who has not been
in America, but the passage through was more than sublime.
She related to me the events of the two preceding weeks as she had known
them to transpire in her own family, and as she had heard of them as
transpiring in the village.
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