A somewhat similar reception saluted the reformer in Boston.  An inflammatory handbill announced to his townsmen his arrival.  “The true American has returned, alias William Lloyd Garrison, the ’Negro Champion,’ from his disgraceful mission to the British metropolis,” etc., etc., and wound up its artful list of lies with the malignant suggestion that “He is now in your power—­do not let him escape you, but go this evening, armed with plenty of tar and feathers and administer to him justice at his abode at No. 9 Merchant’s Hall, Congress street.”  In obedience to this summons, a reception committee in the shape of “a dense mob, breathing threatenings which forboded a storm,” did pay their respects to the “true American” in front of his abode at the Liberator office.  Fortunately the storm passed over without breaking that evening on the devoted head of the “Negro Champion.”  But the meaning of the riotous demonstration it was impossible to miss.  Like the mob in New York it clearly indicated that the country was on the outer edge of an area of violent disturbances on the subject of slavery.

The peril which Garrison had twice escaped was indeed grave, but neither it nor the certainty of future persecution could flutter or depress his spirits.  “For myself,” he wrote subsequently in the Liberator, “I am ready to brave any danger even unto death.  I feel no uneasiness either in regard to my fate or to the success of the cause of Abolition.  Slavery must speedily be abolished; the blow that shall sever the chains of the slaves may shake the nation to its center—­may momentarily disturb the pillars of the Union—­but it shall redeem the character, extend the influence, establish the security, and increase the prosperity of our great republic.”  It was not the rage and malice of his enemies which the brave soul minded, but the ever-present knowledge of human beings in chains and slavery whom he must help.  Nothing could separate him from his duty to them, neither dangers present nor persecutions to come.  The uncertainty of life made him only the more zealous in their behalf.  The necessity of doing, doing, and yet ever doing for the slave was plainly pressing deep like thorns into his thoughts.  “I am more and more impressed;” he wrote a friend a few weeks later, “I am more and more impressed with the importance of ’working whilst the day lasts.’  If ‘we all do fade as a leaf,’ if we are ’as the sparks that fly upward,’ if the billows of time are swiftly removing the sandy foundation of our life, what we intend to do for the captive, and for our country, and for the subjugation of a hostile world, must be done quickly.  Happily ‘our light afflictions are but for a moment.’”