FullReads

Garrison was thrust out of limbo, with a warning, and a hint that Boston-town was a good place for him to emigrate from.

But Garrison neither ran away nor went into hiding–he calmly began a canvass to collect money to refit his printing-office. Boston had treated him well–the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church–he would stay. Men who fatten on difficulties are hard to subdue. Phillips met Garrison shortly after his release, quite by chance, at the house of Henry G. Chapman. Garrison was six years older than Phillips–tall, angular, intellectual, and lacked humor. He also lacked culture. Phillips looked at him and smiled grimly.

But in the Chapman household was still another person, more or less interesting–a Miss Ann Terry Greene. She was an orphan and an heiress–a ward of Chapman’s. Young Phillips had never before met Miss Greene, but she had seen him. She was one of the women who had come down the stairs from “The Liberator” office, when the mob collected. She had seen the tall form of Phillips, and had noticed that he used his elbows to good advantage in opening up the gangway.

“It was a little like a cane-rush–your campus practise served you in good stead,” said the lady, and smiled.

And Phillips listened, perplexed–that a young woman like this, frail, intellectual, of good family, should mix up in fanatical schemes for liberating black men. He could not understand it!

“But you were there–you helped get us out of the difficulty. And if worse had come to worst, I might have appealed to you personally for protection!”

And the young lawyer stammered, “I should have been only too happy,” or something like that. The lady had the best of the logic, and a thin attempt to pity her on account of the unfortunate occurrence went off by the right oblique and was lost in space.

These Abolitionists were a queer lot!

Not long after that meeting at the Chapmans, the young lawyer had legal business at Greenfield that must be looked after. Now, Greenfield is one hundred miles from Boston, but then it was the same distance from tidewater that Omaha is now–that is to say, a two-days’ journey.

The day was set. The stage left every morning at nine o’clock from the Bowdoin Tavern in Bowdoin Square. A young fellow by the name of Charles Sumner was going with Phillips, but at the last moment was detained by other business. That his chum could not go was a disappointment to Phillips–he paced the stone-paved courtway of the tavern with clouded brow. All around was the bustle of travel, and tearful friends bidding folks good-by, and the romantic rush of stagecoach land.

The ease and luxury of travel have robbed it of its poetry–Ruskin was right!

But it didn’t look romantic to Wendell Phillips just then–his chum had failed him–the weather was cold, two days of hard jolting lay ahead. And–“Ah! yes–it is Miss Greene! and Miss Grew, and Mr. Alvord. To Greenfield? why, how fortunate!”

Obliging strangers exchanged seats, so that our friends could be together–passengers found their places on top or inside, bundles and bandboxes were packed away, harness-chains rattled, a long whip sang through the air, and the driver, holding a big bunch of lines in one hand, swung the six horses, with careless grace, out of Bowdoin Square, and turned the leaders’ heads toward Cambridge. The post-horn tooted merrily, dogs barked, and stableboys raised a good-by cheer!

Out past Harvard Square they went, through Arlington and storied Lexington–on to Concord–through Fitchburg, to Greenfield.

It doesn’t take long to tell it, but that was a wonderful trip for Phillips–the greatest and most important journey of his life, he said forty years later.

Miss Grew lived in Greenfield and had been down to visit Miss Greene. Mr. Alvord was engaged to Miss Grew, and wanted to accompany her home, but he couldn’t exactly, you know, unless Miss Greene went along.

So Miss Greene obliged them. The girls knew the day Phillips was going, and hastened their plans a trifle, so as to take the same stage–at least that is what Charles Sumner said.