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[169] ‘copy,’ which he doled out to them a few lines at a time. The final paragraph he set with his own hands, and then stepped to the imposing-table or stone1 to insert it in the vacant place awaiting it. Evening had come, and the little group2 in the printing-office gathered silently about to witness the closing act. As the form was locked for the last time by the senior Yerrinton, all present felt a

1 This old stand, which had done duty in the Liberator office for twenty-five or thirty years, was purchased by a brother printer and abolitionist, George W. Stacy of Milford, Mass., and subsequently (1885) returned by him to Mr. Garrison's family. ‘How many days and nights have I wearily bent over it in getting ready the paper for prompt publication!’ wrote Mr. Garrison to Mr. Stacy (Ms. Oct. 23, 1878). ‘What a “stone of stumbling ” and a “rock of offence” it was to all the enemies of emancipation!’

2 Consisting, besides Mr. Garrison, of his sons George and Frank, and J. B. and J. M. W. Yerrinton, the printers of the paper. In expressing his sadness at the termination of their long business connection, Mr. Garrison wrote to the senior Yerrinton: ‘The little printing-office has daily brought us together, and enabled us to know each other as intimately as it is possible, in every phase of human thought and feeling. I wish to improve this opportunity to testify to the unfailing good temper and kindness of spirit and manner which you have manifested amidst all the annoyances and perplexities connected with type-setting, bad proof, illegible manuscript, etc., etc. Never has there been a sharp or hasty word between us. Your disposition has been so good that mine must have been crabbed indeed at any time to have caused a ripple upon the surface of our feelings towards each other. Blessed with good health, you have been always at your post-not even indulging, for once, in that occasional recreation which seems to be almost indispensable to the recuperation of mind and body. Such assiduity and steadiness I have never known, and call for especial recognition. But your work on the Liberator has not been a mere mechanical performance. You have mingled with it the liveliest interest in the welfare of the paper, in the principles it has inculcated, in the humane and godlike object it has aimed to achieve. . . . For many a year it was anything but reputable to be even the printer of the Liberator; but that reproach is now wiped out, and in the future will make your memory honored’ (Ms. Jan. 1, 1866). To the son, J. M. Winchell Yerrinton, Mr. Garrison sent this tribute: ‘I have known you ever since you were a little boy; and in all the wide range of my acquaintance there is no one I more highly respect and esteem. . . . The best phonographic reporter in this country, you have held an important relation to those grand reformatory changes which have taken place within the last quarter of a century. But for your marvellous skill, where would have been the eloquent speeches of Phillips and others but in the dim remembrance of those who listened to them? And your heart has been in the work. In many ways and on an extended scale, you have been a public benefactor, and a most efficient instrument in disseminating light and knowledge— “thoughts that breathe, and words that burn” ’ (Ms. Jan. 1, 1866).

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