finally
hustled, and thrust by main force into the south door of the City Hall
and carried up to the mayor's room. But the mob had immediately effected
an entrance into the building through the north door and filled the
lower hall. The mayor now addressed the pack, strove manfully in his
feeble way to prevail upon the human wolves to observe order, to sustain
the law and the honor of the city, he even intimated to them that he was
ready to lay down his life on the spot to maintain the law and preserve
order. Then he got out on the ledge over the south door and spoke in a
similar strain to the mob on the street. But alas! he knew not the
secret for reversing the Circean spell by which gentlemen of property
and standing in the community had been suddenly transformed into a
wolfish rabble.

The increasing tumult without soon warned the authorities that what
advantage the mayor may have obtained in the contest with the mob was
only temporary and that their position was momentarily becoming more
perilous and less tenable. It was impossible to say to what extreme of
violence a multitude so infuriated would not go to get their prey. It
seemed to the now thoroughly alarmed mayor that the mob might in their
frenzy attack the City Hall to effect their purpose. There was one
building in the city, which the guardians of the law evidently agreed
could resist the rage of the populace, and that building was the jail.
To this last stronghold of Puritan civilization the authorities and the
powers that were, fell back as a dernier resort to save Garrison's life.
But even in this utmost pitch and extremity, when law was trampled in
the streets, when authority was a reed shaken in a storm, when anarchy
had drowned order in the bosom of the town, the Anglo-Saxon passion for
legal forms asserted itself. The good man, hunted for his life, must
forsooth be got into the only refuge which promised him security from
his pursuers by a regular judicial commitment as a disturber of the
peace. Is there anything at once so pathetic and farcical in the
Universal history of mobs?

Pathetic and farcical to be sure, but it was also well meant, and
therefore we will not stop to quarrel with men who were equal to the
perpetration of a legal fiction so full of the comedy and tragedy of
civilized society. But enough--the municipal wiseacres having put their
heads together and evolved the brilliant plan of committing the prophet
as a disturber of the peace,