immediately set about its execution, which
developed in the sequence into a bird of altogether another color. For a
more perilous and desperate device to preserve Garrison's life could not
well have been hit upon. How was he ever to be got out of the building
and through that sea of ferocious faces surging and foaming around it.
First then by disguising his identity by sundry changes in his apparel.
He obtained a pair of trousers from one kindly soul, another gave him a
coat, a third lent him a stock, a fourth furnished him a cap. A hack was
summoned and stationed at the south door, a posse of constables drew up
and made an open way from the door to it. Another hack was placed in
readiness at the north door. The hack at the south door was only a ruse
to throw the mob off the scent of their prey, while he was got out of
the north door and smuggled into the other hack. Up to this point, the
plan worked well, but the instant after Garrison had been smuggled into
the hack he was identified by the mob, and then ensued a scene which
defies description; no writer however skillful, may hope to reproduce
it. The rioters rushed madly upon the vehicle with the cry: "Cut the
traces! Cut the reins!" They flung themselves upon the horses, hung upon
the wheels, dashed open the doors, the driver the while belaboring their
heads right and left with a powerful whip, which he also laid vigorously
on the backs of his horses. For a moment it looked as if a catastrophe
was unavoidable, but the next saw the startled horses plunging at
break-neck speed with the hack up Court street and the mob pursuing it
with yells of baffled rage. Then began a thrilling, a tremendous race
for life and Leverett street jail. The vehicle flew along Court street
to Bodoin square, but the rioters, with fell purpose flew hardly less
swiftly in its track. Indeed the pursuit of the pack was so close that
the hackman did not dare to drive directly to the jail but reached it by
a detour through Cambridge and Blossom streets. Even then the mob
pressed upon the heels of the horses as they drew up before the portals
of the old prison, which shut not an instant too soon upon the editor of
the _Liberator_, who was saved from a frightful fate to use a Biblical
phrase but by the skin of his teeth.

Here the reformer safe from the wrath of his foes, was locked in a cell;
and here, during the evening, with no abatement of his customary
cheerfulness and serenity of spirit, he re