FROM THE N. Y. TRIBUNE.
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"SOJOURNER TRUTH AT WORK.
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"To the Editor of the Tribune:--
"Sir: Seeing an item in your proper about me, I thought I would give you the particulars of what I am trying to do, in hopes that you would print a letter about it and so help on the good cause. I am urging the people to sign petitions to Congress to have a grant of land set apart for the freed people to earn their living on, and not be dependent on the government for their bread. I have had fifty petitions printed at my own expense, and have been urging the people of the Eastern States for the past seven months. I have been crying out in the East, and now an answer comes to me from the West, as you will see from the following letter. The gentleman who writes it I have never seen or heard of before, but the Lord has raised him up to help me. Bless the Lord! I made up my mind last winter, when I saw able men and women taking dry bread from the government to keep from starving, that I would devote myself to the cause of getting land for these people, where they can work and earn their own living in the West, where the land is so plenty. Instead of going home from Washington to take rest, I am traveling around getting it before the people.
"Instead of sending these people to Liberia, why can't they have a colony in the West? This is why I am contending so in my old age. It is to teach the people that this colony can just as well be in this
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country as in Liberia. Everybody says this is a good work, but nobody helps.
How glad I will be if you will take hold and give it a good lift. Please help me
with these petitions. Yours truly,
"Sojourner Truth.
"Florence, Mass., Feb. 18, 1871.
"P. S. I should have said that the Rev. Gilbert Haven of Boston is kindly aiding me in getting petitions signed, and will receive all petitions signed in Massachusetts and send them to Congress.S. T."
"Topeka, Kansas, Dec. 31, 1870.
"Sojourner Truth.--Dear Madam: I know so much of you by reputation, and
venerate and love so much your character, that I am induced to write this. I say
I know so much of you, which is true, but it is only by report, as I have never
had the pleasure of meeting you yet. My object in writing this is to ask and
earnestly request that you make our town a visit. I would very much like to have
you come to my house and make it your home as long as you ca be contented. If
you will say you will come, I will send you the price of your railroad fare and
enough to pay additional expenses. Please let me hear from you, and, if
possible, convey the good intelligence that you will come and see us. Yours,
very respectfully,
"B. M. S."
"SOJOURNER TRUTH IN SPRINGFIELD.
"Those who remember Mrs. Stowe's graphic sketch of 'Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl,' in the Atlantic some years ago, will be interested to see and hear
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her. She is now visiting at Dr. Church's on Elm Street, for a few days, and will address an audience at Institute Hall, to-night, on her chosen subject, the sufferings of the old colored people and children in Washington, and how to relieve them. She is one of the most original and effective speakers, though an unlettered woman, and all her early life a slave in New York. She is now between seventy and eighty years old, and has outlived many of her thirteen children, but her eye is not dim nor her natural force abated in proportion to her years, and her deep, powerful voice has the same effect as formerly in moving an audience. She says, however, that this is the last time she shall speak in Massachusetts; she is now on her way to a friend of hers and her cause in Kansas, and at her age she never expects to return here. Her object in holding meetings is, not to raise money, but to stir up the people to petition Congress to show humanity to the old and helpless of her race. She has spent much time in Washington, and knows by observation the misery of the colored people there, and she wants Congress to provide a tract of land for them in some Western State and remove them to it, where they can live frugally and support themselves, instead of depending upon charity at Washington. We hope our citizens will avail themselves on this opportunity to see and hear one of the most remarkable women of our time--a true sibyl, as Mrs. Stowe calls her, but a Christian sibyl, and more devoted to good words and works than to obscure predictions. Her book of autographs contains those of Abraham Lincoln, Gen. Grant, Mr.
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Garrison, and a great many other eminent men and women, living or dead, and is a curious memento of her life."
"SOJOURNER TRUTH'S LECTURE
"At Franklin Hall, last evening, was in the main an exhortation to all interested in the elevation of the blacks to petition the authorities at Washington for land out West whereon to locate the surplus freedmen, and let them earn their own living, which she argued would be cheaper and better for the government than to care for them in any other way. Her matter and manner were simply indescribable, often straying far away from the starting point; but each digression was fraught with telling logic, rough humor, or effective sarcasm. She thought she had a work to do, and had considerable faith in what she was accomplishing; but she said to her audience, 'With all your opportunities for readin' and writin,' you don't take hold and do anything. My God, I wonder what you are in the world for!' She had faith in the influence which the majority had with Congress and believed that whatever they demanded, good or bad, Congress would grant; hence she was working to make majorities. She leaves the East soon never to return, and goes to Kansas where the Lord had plainly called her by prompting a man whom she had never seen or heard of to invite her and pay her expenses. Her enthusiasm over the prospect was unbounded, and she said that, like the New Jerusalem, if she didn't find the West all she had expected, she would have a good time thinking about it. A good deal of sound orthodox
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theology was mingled with her discourse, as well as a description of her visit to the White House, and the reformation she effected in the Washington horse-car system. The whole was followed by a valedictory song in true plantation style. A large and interested audience was present to get the benefit of her remarks."
"Her views on the question of woman's dress and the prevailing fashions are interesting. They are substantially these: 'I'm awful hard on dress, you know. Women, you forget that you are the mothers of creation; you forget your sons were cut off like grass by the war, and the land was covered with their blood; you rig yourselves up in panniers and Grecian-bend backs and flummeries; yes, and mothers and gray-haired grandmothers wear high-heeled shoes and humps on their heads, and put them on their babies, and stuff them out so that they keel over when the wind blows. O mothers, I'm ashamed of ye! What will such lives as you live do for humanity? When I saw them women on the stage at the Woman's Suffrage Convention, the other day, I thought, What kind of reformers be you, with goose-wings on your heads, as if you were going to fly, and dressed in such ridiculous fashion, talking about reform and women's rights? 'Pears to me, you had better reform yourselves first. But Sojourner is an old body, and will soon get out of this world into another, and wants to say when she gets there, Lord, I have done my duty, I have told the whole truth and kept nothing back.'"
In another issue the Tribune says:--
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"Mrs. Sojourner Truth, a venerable colored woman, who has been heard, before, gave her testimony the other day, in Providence, against the flummery and folly of 'feminine vestments,' and specially did she rebuke the 'women on the stage at the Woman's Suffrage Convention.' Hark to her!
"'When I saw them women on the stage at the Woman's Suffrage Convention, the other day, I thought, What kind of reformers be you, with goose wings on your heads, as if you were going to fly, and dresses in such ridiculous fashion, talking about reform and women's rights? 'Pears to me you had better reform yourselves first.'"
"Just before this, Mrs. Sojourner had freed her mind respecting 'panniers and Grecian-bend backs, high-heeled shoes, and humps on the head.' We should earnestly joint in Mrs. Truth's protest against the manifold absurdities of woman's clothing, if we thought reform possible; but we don't. There has been no simplicity of attire since our grandmother Eve made her first apron of fig-leaves.
"THE FASHIONS.
"Sojourner says that 'the women wear two heads on their shoulders with but little if any brains in either.' She knew of a young woman who had her hair cut on account of an impotency in her head and eyes. After the hair was cut, she put it into a net and wore it for a waterfall--getting rest for the head only during the night. Her hair grew again but still she continued to wear the extra hair with the addition of several skeins of stocking or other sort of yarn. Her
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impotencies of course grew no better' very fast. Perhaps there is no truer saying than that 'folly is a fund that will never lose ground while fools are so rife in the nation.' The trouble of the thing is, or the reason why we have the trouble is, that the priests are dumb dogs and dare not bark or bring out the truths of the gospel against such gigantic evils, as war, slavery, and the prided fashions. We leave Sojourner Truth with her intuitiveness and without the letter, to battle almost alone these world-wide evils. May Heaven bless and sustain her in her humanitarian work and 'God-like mission.'Selahommah."
Accompanied by her grandson, Samuel Banks, she left Battle Creek in Sept., 1871, for her western trip to Kansas. Frequently stopping by the way to hold meetings, they at length reached Kansas, where she was cordially received by her new friend, Mr. Smith, as well as by friends of earlier date, whom she had known in Massachusetts and Michigan. Her stay in this State was rendered most agreeable by the attentions of kind and sympathizing people, who spared no pains to make her visit both pleasant and profitable. The newspaper reporters did not neglect her, as the following extracts will show:--
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