that day, described sixteen years afterward the latter and the effects produced by him on that audience.  Our young attorney vividly recalled how “‘Abolitionist’ was linked with contempt, in the silver tones of Otis, and all the charms that a divine eloquence and most felicitous diction could throw around a bad cause were given it; the excited multitude seemed actually ready to leap up beneath the magic of his speech.  It would be something, if one must die, to die by such a hand—­a hand somewhat worthy and able to stifle anti-slavery, if it could be stifled.  The orator was worthy of the gigantic task attempted; and thousands crowded before him, every one of their hearts melted by that eloquence, beneath which Massachusetts had bowed, not unworthily, for more than thirty years.”

Here is a specimen of the sort of goading which the wild-cat-like spirit of the city got from the orators.  It is taken from the speech of Peleg Sprague.  The orator is paying his respects to George Thompson, “an avowed emissary” “a professed agitator,” who “comes here from the dark and corrupt institutions of Europe to enlighten us upon the rights of man and the moral duties of our own condition.  Received by our hospitality, he stands here upon our soil, protected by our laws, and hurls firebrands, arrows, and death into the habitations of our neighbors and friends, and brothers; and when he shall have kindled a conflagration which is sweeping in desolation over our land, he has only to embark for his own country, and there look serenely back with indifference or exultation upon the widespread ruin by which our cities are wrapt in flames, and our garments rolled in blood.”

The great meeting was soon a thing of the past but not so its effects.  The echoes of Otis and Sprague did not cease at its close.  They thrilled in the air, they thrilled long afterward in the blood of the people.  When the multitude dispersed Mischief went out into the streets of the city with them.  Wherever afterward they gathered Mischief made one in their midst.  Mischief was let loose, Mischief was afoot in the town.  The old town was no place for the foreign emissary, neither was it a safe place for the arch-agitator.  On the day after the meeting, Garrison and his young wife accordingly retreated to her father’s home at Brooklyn, Conn., where the husband needed not to be jostling elbows with Mistress Mischief, and her pals.

Garrison’s answer to the speeches of Otis and Sprague was in his sternest vein.  He is sure after reading them that, “there is more guilt attaching to the people of the free States from the continuance of slavery, than those in the slave States.”  At least he is ready to affirm upon the authority of Orator Sprague, “that New England is as really a slave-holding section of the republic as Georgia or South Carolina.”  Sprague, he finds, “in amicable companionship and popular repute with thieves and adulterers; with slaveholders, slavedealers, and slave-destroyers; ... with the disturbers of the public peace; with the robbers of the public mail; with ruffians who insult, pollute, and lacerate helpless women; and with conspirators against the lives and liberties of New England citizens.”