[323] his speeches have been grand and eloquent beyond all description. We hope that his visit will not have been wholly vain to him in a pecuniary point of view. . . . Garrison was to have gone West1 with Thompson (who, by the by, intends to see Montreal, Quebec, and the fugitive-slave settlements in Canada before he returns); but W. L. G. has been, for a fortnight, confined to the house, and part of the2 time to the bed, with severe pain in the spine. He is now better, and will take the Liberator again. His health has been3 unusually good the past winter, and he has done an immense amount of lecturing.4 . . . In Boston, all is activity—never before so much since I knew the cause. The rescue of Shadrach has set the whole public5 afire. We have some hundreds of fugitives among us. The oldest are alarmed. I had an old woman of seventy ask my advice about flying, though originally free, and fearful only of being caught up by mistake. Of course, in one so old and valueless there was no temptation to mistake, but in others it is horrible to see the distress of families torn apart at this inclement season, and the working head forced to leave good employment, and seek not employment so much as the chance of it in the narrow, unenterprising, and overstocked market of Canada. Our Vigilance Committee meets every night. The escapes have been providential. Since Shadrach's case, nigh a hundred have left the city. The way we get news of warrants is surprising. One officer was boasting to one of our members, whom he did not know to be such, that now they had a fellow in sight, and he would be arrested by 1 o'clock. Our friend lounged carelessly away, told what he'd heard, and by 12 the poor fellow described was steaming it on iron lines to Canada. Another, at work on a wharf, came out of his employer's store,6 saw his old master before him, heard him whistle, thought that was as much of such music as he cared to wait for, dived into the cellar, up the back door, and ‘has not been heard tell of,’ as Baillie Nicol Jarvie says, since.7 There have been several as close escapes as that, and there are still quite a number of Southerners here. It is said privately
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1 That is, to Central and Western New York.
4 We cannot, in the course of this narrative, adequately depict Mr. Garrison's labors as a lecturer concurrently with his journalistic activity. His addresses annually away from Boston often averaged more than one a fortnight. Saturday and Sunday were the customary suburban days, as being freest from the printing-office.
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
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