into his grave, kind face, or caught the warm accents of his pacific tones, or listened to the sedate intensity, and humanity of his discourses on the enormity of American slavery as they fell from him in conversations between man and man.  Here is a case in point, a typical incident in the life of the reformer; it occurred, it is true, when he was twenty-seven, but it might have occurred at twenty-five quite as well; it is narrated by Samuel J. May in his recollections of the anti-slavery conflict:  On his way from New York to Philadelphia with Garrison, Mr. May fell into a discussion with a pro-slavery passenger on the vexed question of the day.  There was the common pro-slavery reasoning, which May answered as well as he was able.  Presently Mr. Garrison drew near the disputants, whereupon May took the opportunity to shift the anti-slavery burden of the contention to his leader’s shoulders.  All of his most radical and unpopular Abolition doctrines Garrison immediately proceeded to expound to his opponent.  “After a long conversation,” says Mr. May, “which attracted as many as could get within hearing, the gentleman said, courteously:  ’I have been much interested, sir, in what you have said, and in the exceedingly frank and temperate manner in which you have treated the subject.  If all Abolitionists were like you, there would be much less opposition to your enterprise.  But, sir, depend upon it, that hair-brained, reckless, violent fanatic, Garrison, will damage, if he does not shipwreck, any cause.’  Stepping forward, I replied, ’Allow me, sir, to introduce you to Mr. Garrison, of whom you entertain so bad an opinion.  The gentleman you have been talking with is he.’”

Or take Harriet Martineau’s first impressions on seeing him.  “His aspect put to flight in an instant what prejudices his slanderers had raised in me.  I was wholly taken by surprise.  It was a countenance glowing with health, and wholly expressive of purity, animation and gentleness.  I did not wonder at the citizen who, seeing a print of Garrison at a shop window without a name to it, went in and bought it, and framed it as the most saintlike of countenances.”

The appearance of such a man on the stage of our history as a nation, at this hour, was providential.  His coming was in the fulness of time.  A rapid review of events anterior to the advent of Garrison will serve to place this matter more clearly before the general reader.  To begin, then, at the beginning we have two ships off the American coast, the one casting anchor in Plymouth harbor, the other discharging its cargo at Jamestown.  They were both freighted with human souls.  But how different!  Despotism landed at Jamestown, democracy at Plymouth.  Here in the germ was the Southern idea, slave labor, slave institutions; and here also was the Northern idea, free labor, free institutions.  Once planted they grew, each seed idea multiplying after its kind.  In course of time there arose on one side an industrial