fight against the wrong. Believing in that
eternal judgment based upon the law more lasting than the temporary
statutes of to-day, he acted in accordance with the spirit of the
Gospel, as he in his conscience understood it." Hon. D.F. Parker was
glad to honor John Brown because he dared, upon slave soil, to strike
the blow he did. "Whenever wrong exists, it is our duty to wage war
against it, with peaceful remedies if possible, if not, then with such
as our grandsires used in settling accounts with their oppressors."

The Rev. Mr. Richardson was particularly apt--I may say, grandly
prophetic. Thus: "Never at the beginning of great periods in history
was insurrection so successful as that. It has made it apparent that
slavery can and must be abolished; it has set every press and every
tongue in the land to agitating the subject of slavery, and has made
the pillars of that institution to rock and reel. It has diminished
the value of slave stock. Two hundred million dollars, says a Southern
paper, John Brown destroyed that Sunday night, and has led how many
families to look for a speedy and certain method of getting rid of the
perilous property. That man whom we wrong in calling crazy, was
groping for the pillars of the slave institution, and he has been
successful." Then came Rev. T.W. Higginson who had known much of
Brown's plans, and to whom the prisoner had written only a short time
before his execution. "How little, one year ago to-day, we expected to
hear such words from men who have been deemed conservative; words so
heroic, so absolute in defence of principle; and I have wished the pen
to record the thoughts which lie behind the faces we all meet; the
anxious, the determined, the desperate faces, the varied faces that
meet us ... John Brown is now beyond our reach; but the oppressed for
whom he died still live. Methinks I hear his voice speaking to you in
the words of that Scripture which he loved, 'Inasmuch as ye did it to
these little ones ye did it unto me.'"

The collection that was taken up for the family amounted to $145.88.
Afterward Homer B. Sprague, Principal of the High School, spoke, as
did Mrs. Abby K. Foster, both in an eloquent and forcible manner. At
half-past ten o'clock the meeting adjourned, the large audience
remaining to the end.

Milford, Millbury and Fitchburg, in this County, in a similar manner
took notice of the sad event. In the Legislature, then in session,
there was a movement made i