y the related families,—so that through connections by kin or friendship nearly all the society was likely to take a part.
For instance, the Ticknor, Eliot, Dwight, Guild, and Norton families were connected by marriage; and Mr. Eliot was a near kinsman of the Curtis family.
Similar ties by blood and marriage united the Sears, Mason, Warren, Parker, and Amory families, and also the Shaw, Sturgis, Parkman, and Perkins families.
Another group was the Sturgis, Perkins, Cabot, Forbes, Cary, Gardiner, and Cushing families.
The different groups were often connected by kin or close friendship. Sumner was for a time, at an earlier period, shut out from one house on Beacon Street merely for complimenting, in a lawyer's office, the editor of a magazine who had reviewed a domestic controversy already before the public in judicial proceedings.
The head of the family, learning the circumstance from a relative who, unobserved, was within hearing, shortly after returned a subscription paper whi
committee and one of the leading promoters of the movement, Sumner gave a large share of his time to addressing the people.
He was urged in formal invitations to attend mass meetings in other States,—Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Ohio,—and to speak in the cities of New York, Brooklyn, Albany, and Philadelphia; but except a week in Maine, he confined himself to Massachusetts, speaking in the principal towns and cities,
In Maine he spoke at Portland, Bath.
Waterville, Augusta, Gardiner, and perhaps one or two other points in that State In Massachusetts he spoke at Central Hall, Boston, September 14, and at other dates at Plymouth, Roxbury, Somerville, Chelsea, Milford, Newburyport, Dorchester, Amherst, Pittsfield, Great Barrington, Adams, Stockbridge, Chicopee, Springfield, Lynn, Salem, Brookline, Nantucket, Fall River, Taunton, Lowell, Fitchburg, Dedham, Canton, Worcester, and Cambridge. and on October 31 at Faneuil Hall.
The speech was not written out, and no report is