his heart is in his protest.

Robert Hardy was our first ABOLITIONIST--awful name! He was a journeyman
cooper, and worked in the big cooper-shop belonging to the great
pork-packing establishment which was Marion City's chief pride and sole
source of prosperity. He was a New-Englander, a stranger. And, being a
stranger, he was of course regarded as an inferior person--for that has
been human nature from Adam down--and of course, also, he was made
to feel unwelcome, for this is the ancient law with man and the other
animals. Hardy was thirty years old, and a bachelor; pale, given to
reverie and reading. He was reserved, and seemed to prefer the isolation
which had fallen to his lot. He was treated to many side remarks by
his fellows, but as he did not resent them it was decided that he was a
coward.

All of a sudden he proclaimed himself an abolitionist--straight out
and publicly! He said that negro slavery was a crime, an infamy. For a
moment the town was paralyzed with astonishment; then it broke into a
fury of rage and swarmed toward the cooper-shop to lynch Hardy. But
the Methodist minister made a powerful speech to them and stayed their
hands. He proved to them that Hardy was insane and not responsible for
his words; that no man COULD be sane and utter such words.

So Hardy was saved. Being insane, he was allowed to go on talking.
He was found to be good entertainment. Several nights running he made
abolition speeches in the open air, and all the town flocked to hear and
laugh. He implored them to believe him sane and sincere, and have pity
on the poor slaves, and take measurements for the restoration of their
stolen rights, or in no long time blood would flow--blood, blood, rivers
of blood!

It was great fun. But all of a sudden the aspect of things changed. A
slave came flying from Palmyra, the county-seat, a few miles back,
and was about to escape in a canoe to Illinois and freedom in the dull
twilight of the approaching dawn, when the town constable seized
him. Hardy happened along and tried to rescue the negro; there was a
struggle, and the constable did not come out of it alive. Hardly crossed
the river with the negro, and then came back to give himself up. All
this took time, for the Mississippi is not a French brook, like the
Seine, the Loire, and those other rivulets, but is a real river nearly
a mile wide. The town was on hand in force by now, but the Methodist
preacher and the sheriff had already made