which he sailed for St. Johns, New Brunswick, whence he subsequently took passage for England.  Garrison was inconsolable.  “Who now shall go forth to argue our cause in public,” he sadly asked, “with subtle sophists and insolent scoffers?” little dreaming that there was then approaching him out of the all-hail hereafter a greater in these identical respects than George Thompson, indisputably great as he was.

It was a blessed refuge to Garrison, the Benson homestead of Brooklyn, termed Friendship’s Valley.  Hunted as a partridge by his enemies here he found the quiet, and sympathy, and the right royal welcome and affection for which his heart panted amidst the dust, and din, and dangers of the crusade against slavery.  But grateful as were the domestic sweets of Friendship’s Valley, his was altogether too militant and masterful a spirit to yield himself without a struggle to the repose which it offered.  He did not at all relish the idea of being a forced exile from Boston, of being obliged to edit the Liberator at such long range.  But his friends urged him to submit to the one, and do the other, both on grounds of economy and common prudence.  He was almost super-anxious lest it be said that the fear of the mob drove him out of Boston, and that the fear of it kept him out.  This super-anxiety in that regard his friends to a certain degree shared with him.  It was a phase of Abolition grit.  Danger attracted this new species of reformers as a magnet draws iron.  Instead of running away from it, they were, with one accord, forever rushing into it.  And the leader in Brooklyn was for rushing back to Boston, where, if one chanced to sow the wind in the morning, he might be morally certain of reaping the whirlwind in the afternoon.

Two weeks after he had been secretly conveyed to Canton by Deputy Sheriff Parkman, being the day of his discharge from Leverett street jail, he was back again in Boston.  The popular excitement had subsided.  He showed himself freely in the streets and was nowhere molested.  One day, however, while at the anti-slavery office on Washington street, he witnessed what was perhaps a final manifestation of the cat-like spirit of the great mob.  A procession passed by with band and music, bearing aloft a large board on which were represented George Thompson and a black woman with this significant allusion to the riot, made as if addressed to himself by his dusky companion in disgrace:  “When are we going to have another meeting, Brother Thompson?” The cat-like creature had lapsed into a playful mood, but its playfulness would have quickly given place to an altogether different fit did it but know that Garrison was watching it from the window of the very room where a few weeks before he had nearly fallen into its clutches.

Garrison remained in Boston two weeks, going about the city, wherever and whenever business or duty called him in a perfectly fearless way.  He left on the afternoon of November 18th.  On that same afternoon the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society held a memorable meeting at the house of Francis Jackson.  It was then that Harriet Martineau, another foreign emissary, avowed her entire agreement with the principles of the Abolitionists, which subjected her to social ostracism, and to unlimited abuse from the pro-slavery press of the city.