t would be a
---- shame, an eternal disgrace to the State, to have her put
into jail--into the very room that Watkins had last occupied.'

"'Certainly, gentlemen,' I replied, 'and this you may prevent if
you please.'

"'Oh!' they cried, 'we are not her friends; we are not in favor
of her school; we don't want any more ---- niggers coming among
us. It is your place to stand by Miss Crandall and help her now.
You and your ---- abolition brethren have encouraged her to
bring this nuisance into Canterbury, and it is ---- mean in you
to desert her now.'

"I rejoined: 'She knows we have not deserted her, and do not
intend to desert her. The law which her persecutors have
persuaded our legislators to enact is an infamous one, worthy of
the dark ages. It would be just as bad as it is whether we would
give bonds for her or not. But the people generally will not so
soon realize how bad, how wicked, how cruel a law it is unless we
suffer her persecutors to inflict upon her all the penalties it
prescribes. She is willing to bear them for the sake of the cause
she has so nobly espoused. If you see fit to keep her from
imprisonment in the cell of a murderer for having proffered the
blessings of a good education to those who in our country need it
most, you may do so; _we shall not_.'

"They turned from us in great wrath, words falling from their
lips which I shall not repeat.

"The sun had descended nearly to the horizon; the shadows of
night were beginning to fall around us. The sheriff could defer
the dark deed no longer. With no little emotion, and with words
of earnest deprecation, he gave that excellent, heroic, Christian
young lady into the hands of the jailer, and she was led into the
cell of Watkins. So soon as I had heard the bolts of her prison
door turned in the lock, and saw the key taken out, I bowed and
said: 'The deed is done, completely done. It cannot be recalled.
It has passed into the history of our nation and our age.' I went
away with my steadfast friend, George W. Benson, assured that the
legislators of the State had been guilty of a most unrighteous
act, and that Miss Crandall's persecutors had also committed a
great blunder; that they all would have much more reason to be
ashamed of her imprisonment than she or her fr