CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
LEVI COFFIN.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
STRANGE SEA ANIMALS.
THE POINT OF HONOUR.
‘SUPERS’ ON THE STAGE.
THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.
THE TWO ROSES.
No. 752.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1878.
LEVI COFFIN.
The Coffyns or Coffins are a Devonshire family,said to have been founded by one of the followersof the Conqueror. In 1642 Tristram Coffyn, a sonof this old house, sailed from Plymouth for NewEngland, taking with him his wife and five children,his mother and two sisters. He settled at Salisbury,in the colony of Massachusetts, and hisdescendants are now to be found in many of theStates. Several of them have won themselves aname of note in the service of their country; butnone has a higher claim to the remembrance, notonly of their fellow-citizens but of all who honourworth wherever it is to be found, than Levi Coffin,whose memoirs lie before us under the title ofReminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed Presidentof the Underground Railroad, being a brief Historyof the Labours of a Lifetime on behalf of the Slave(London: Sampson Low, 1876). His tale, told inplain homely language, is a stirring one, and shewsus a phase of American life which is happily athing of the past; for now that slavery is abolishedthere is no longer any need for the devoted laboursof the true-hearted men who by means of the oncefamous ‘Underground Railroad’ helped the fugitiveslave on his way to the land of freedom—overthe Canadian border and into British territory,where, and where only, he was safe from kidnappersand hunters.
Levi Coffin was born in 1798. His father was amember of a colony of the Society of Friends,settled at New Garden in North Carolina; and hehimself has always belonged to that religiousprofession. One day when he was about sevenyears old he was standing beside his father, whowas chopping up some wood at a little distancefrom the house. Along the road came a coffle organg of slaves, chained in couples on each side ofa long chain which extended between them. Atsome distance behind came the slave-dealer with awagon-load of supplies. Levi’s father spoke pleasantlyto the slaves. ‘Well boys,’ he said, ‘why dothey chain you?’ One of them replied for therest: ‘They have taken us away from our wivesand children, and they chain us lest we shouldmake our escape and go back to them.’ Thegang tramped off along the dusty road; and inanswer to the child’s eager questions, his fathertold him what slavery was; and little