The pioneer was one of the most generous of givers.  Poor indeed he was, much beyond the common allotment of men of his intelligence and abilities, but he was never too indigent to answer the appeals of poverty.  If the asker’s needs were greater than his own he divided with him the little which he had.  To his home all sorts of people were attracted, Abolitionists, peace men, temperance reformers, perfectionists, homoeopathists, hydropathists, mesmerists, spiritualists, Grahamites, clairvoyants, whom he received with unfailing hospitality, giving welcome and sympathy to the new ideas, food and shelter for the material sustenance of the fleshly vehicles of the new ideas.  He evidently was strongly of the opinion that there are “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of” in the philosophy of any particular period in the intellectual development of man.  No age knows it all.  It was almost a lo, here, and a lo, there, with him, so large was his bump of wonder, so unlimited was his appetite for the incredible and the improbable in the domain of human knowledge and speculation.  Great was the man’s faith, great was his hope, great was his charity.

He was one of the most observant of men in all matters affecting the rights of others; he was one of the least observant in all matters appertaining to himself.  With a decided taste for dress, yet his actual knowledge of the kind of clothes worn by him from day to day was amusingly inexact, as the following incident shows:  Before wearing out an only pair of trousers, the pioneer had indulged in the unusual luxury of a new pair.  But as there was still considerable service to be got out of the old pair, he, like a prudent man, laid aside the new ones for future use.  His wife, however, who managed all this part of the domestic business, determined, without consulting him, the morning when the new trousers should be donned.  She made the necessary changes when her lord was in bed, putting the new in the place of the old.  Garrison wore for several days the new trousers, thinking all the time that they were his old ones until his illusions in this regard were dispelled by an incident which cost him the former.  Some poor wretch of a tramp, knocking in an evil hour at the pioneer’s door and asking for clothes, decided the magnificent possessor of two pairs of trousers, to don his new ones and to pass the old ones on to the tramp.  But when he communicated the transaction to his wife, she hoped, with a good deal of emphasis, that he had not given away the pair of breeches which he was wearing, for if he had she would beg to inform him that he had given away his best ones!  But the pioneer’s splendid indifference to meum and tuum where his own possessions were concerned was equal to the occasion.  He got his compensation in the thought that his loss was another’s gain.  That, indeed, was not to be accounted loss which had gone to a brother-man whose needs were greater than his own.