John Jay Chapman, William Lloyd Garrison

[212] Furness, “who were wont to sing at the Anti-slavery meetings, were in the gallery, and they attempted to raise a song, to soothe the savages with music. But it was of no avail. Rynders drowned their fine voices with noise and shouting.” Still, a knockdown argument with a live combatant would have suited him better than mere Bedlamitish disturbance. He was almost gratified by young Thomas L. Kane, son of Judge Kane of Philadelphia, who, seeing the rush of the mob upon the platform, had himself leaped there, to protect his townsman, Dr. Furness. “They shall not touch a hair of your head,” he said in a tone of great excitement; and, as the strain became more intense, he rushed up to Rynders and shook his fist in his face. “He said to me [Dr. Furness] with the deepest emphasis: ‘If he touches Mr. Garrison I'll kill him.’ ” But Mr. Garrison's composure was more than a coat of mail.

The knot was cut by Francis Jackson's formal offer of the floor to Rynders as soon as Mr. Garrison had finished his remarks; with an invitation meanwhile to take a seat on the platform. This, says Mr. May, he scoutingly refused; but, seeing the manifest fairness of the president's offer, drew back a