Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 3

We pass over the receptions given to him by the¹ colored people at Belknap-Street Church; in Salem; in Faneuil Hall. Rather let us look in, with a poet's eye, on the reunited abolitionists at the Anti-Slavery Bazaar, opened in the same hall on December 22. Never was more humor combined with a finer discernment of character and more exquisite portraiture than in these lines, written as a ‘Letter from Boston’ to the editor of the² Pennsylvania Freeman, by James Russell Lowell:

Dear M.,³
By way of saving time,⁴
I'll do this letter up in rhyme,
Whose slim stream through four pages flows
Ere one is packed with tight-screwed prose,
Threading the tube of an epistle
Smooth as a child's breath through a whistle.

The great attraction now of all
Is the ‘Bazaar’ at Faneuil Hall,
Where swarm the Anti-Slavery folks
As thick, dear Miller, as your jokes.
There's Garrison, his features very
Benign for an incendiary,
Beaming forth sunshine through his glasses
On the surrounding lads and lasses,
(No bee could blither be or brisker,)—
A Pickwick somehow turned John Ziska,
His bump of firmness swelling up
Like a rye cupcake from its cup.
And there, too, was his English tea-set,
Which in his ear a kind of flea set,
His Uncle Samuel for its beauty
Demanding sixty dollars duty,
('T was natural Sam should serve his trunk ill,
For G., you know, has cut his uncle,)