[11]
in the breasts of the multitude!
I wrote the handbill, as “fast as a horse could trot,” at the long desk in the counting-room, while the gentlemen looked over my shoulderst Having finished it and read it to the committee, they pronounced it “just the thing,” and left, ordering 500 copies of it. The handbill was short, was soon put in type,1 and by one o'clock the copies had all been distributed—in the insurance offices, the reading-rooms, all along State Street, in the hotels, bar-rooms, etc.; and about one-third of the whole lot was scattered among mechanics at the North End, who were mightily taken with it, as the mob subsequently gave abundant proof. . . . Tom Withington and several of the younger apprentices2 distributed the handbills.
The effect they produced you may remember.
By three or four o'clock in the afternoon both sides of State Street, near the Old State House;3 Washington Street, from Joy's Building to Court Street; the bottom of the latter street up to the Court House, etc., were densely packed with an excited mob, who were determined that the meeting should not be held. There were present from six to ten thousand men,4 including “many gentlemen of property and influence,” an expression I used the next day in the Gazette in an editorial describing the mob.
Such was the situation when
Mr. Garrison arrived upon the scene, and his account of the sequel will now be given,
5 with such aids and checks as the best evidence permits.
He had consented to address the meeting:
6
As the meeting was to commence at 3 o'clock P. M., I went to the hall about twenty minutes before that time.7 Perhaps a
