Meantime the atmosphere upstairs at the hall began to betoken a fast approaching storm.  The noises ominously increased on the landing just outside.  The door of the hall was swung wide open and the entrance filled with rioters.  Garrison, all unconscious of danger, walked over to these persons and remonstrated in his grave way with them in regard to the disturbance which they were producing, winding up with a characteristic bit of pleasantry:  “Gentlemen,” said he, “perhaps you are not aware that this is a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, called and intended exclusively for ladies, and those only who have been invited to address them.  Understanding this fact you will not be so rude and indecorous as to thrust your presence upon this meeting.”  But he added, “If, gentlemen, any of you are ladies in disguise—­why only apprise me of the fact, give me your names, and I will introduce you to the rest of your sex, and you can take seats among them accordingly.”  The power of benignity over malignity lasted a few moments after this little speech, when the situation changed rapidly from bad to worse.  “The tumult continually increased,” says an eye-witness, “with horrible execrations, howling, stamping, and finally shrieking with rage.  They seemed not to dare to enter, notwithstanding their fury, but mounted on each other’s shoulders, so that a row of hostile heads appeared over the slight partition, of half the height of the wall which divides the society’s rooms from the landing place.  We requested them to allow the door to be shut; but they could not decide as to whether the request should be granted, and the door was opened and shut with violence, till it hung useless from its hinges.”

Garrison thinking that his absence might quiet these perturbed spirits and so enable the ladies to hold their meeting without further molestation volunteered at this juncture to the president of the society to retire from the hall unless she desired him to remain.  She did not wish him to stay but urged him to go at once not only for the peace of the meeting but for his own safety.  Garrison thereupon left the hall meaning at the time to leave the building as well, but egress by the way of the landing and the stairs, he directly perceived was impossible, and did what seemed the next best thing, entered the anti-slavery office, separated from the hall by a board partition.  Charles C. Burleigh accompanied him within this retreat.  The door between the hall and the office was securely locked, and Garrison with that marvelous serenity of mind, which was a part of him, busied himself immediately with writing to a friend an account of the scenes which were enacting in the next room.