MS. Sept.

14, 1877, to

S. May, Jr.

friends, whose respect and affection are in value beyond all price." And to his friend May he wrote: From the time of our departure from New York to our leaving Liverpool, everything went auspiciously with us. Our good angels seemed to be ever at our side. We lost no appointment, met with no accident, and had our cup of enjoyment filled to overflowing."

CHAPTER XI.

LAST YEARS.-1877-79.

1877-79.

F his summer in Great Britain did not materially CHAP. XI. check the progress of the disease which had for years been undermining Mr. Garrison's health, it certainly must be credited with the fresh vigor and spirit which he manifested during the brief remainder of his life. In reviewing his movements and undertakings in the succeeding year and a half, it is difficult to realize how much debility and weakness he really experienced, or how steadily his vital powers were being sapped.

His undiminished interest in public affairs, and his deep solicitude as to the fate of the colored population of the South, now practically denied all the political representation, influence, and power to which they were numerically and legally entitled, were manifested soon after his return from England. In a letter to the New York Times he condemned the Southern policy of President Hayes as "totally at variance with all his fair-spoken words and pledges, a deplorable betrayal of a most sacred trust, a discount upon inflexible loyalty, and a bounty upon rebellious usurpation"; and in January, 1878, he returned to the theme in another letter, which was widely Chandler. circulated.

Oct. 30, 1877.

Jan. 21,

to W. E.

1877-78.

The social enjoyments of the fall and winter were many, between the frequent intercourse with old friends, and the numerous lectures and concerts which continued to attract him. An affectionate interchange of letters took place between himself and Whittier in December, MSS. Dec. when the latter's seventieth birthday was celebrated; and to the many public tributes paid the poet, Mr. Garrison

18, 20, 1877.

contributed a friendly and critical estimate in blank

Dec. 1, 1877. verse, through the columns of the Boston Literary

World.

greatly enjoyed, was when he became ac

A new friendship, which he formed in the spring of 1878, quainted, through Mrs. Child, with the gifted sculptress, Miss Anne Whitney of Boston, and was invited by her to sit for his portrait bust. During the months of March, April, and May he made frequent visits to her studio, and gave her full opportunity to study his features and character. His mobility of expression in animated conversation revealed to her the difficulty of her task-a difficulty enhanced, in respect to the eyes, by the fact that spectacles cannot well be reproduced in sculpture.1 She succeeded admirably, however, and the bust, when completed, received the emphatic and unanimous approval of Mr. Garrison's children and friends. With no abatement of strength and dignity, it happily portrays his sweet and serene expression, and the firm repose of his later years.2

1 Mr. Phillips held that as the spectacles were not literally part of the face, a portrait for posterity should be painted without them, and he accordingly commissioned a Boston artist to make one of Mr. Garrison with the glasses omitted. The result was a picture which Mrs. Garrison failed to recognize as even intended for her husband, and Mr. Phillips consigned it to his garret. Two other busts of Mr. Garrison had been made before Miss Whitney executed hers,—one by S. V. Clevenger (in 1841), and the other by John A. Jackson (in 1858), neither of great excellence. In writing of the conflicting opinions of friends about the latter, Mr. Garrison said: "One thing is certain - for some reason or other, I have one of the most difficult faces in the world to take (owing, probably, to its changeableness of expression); all artists, at home or abroad, having failed to get a likeness generally satisfactory to my personal friends. . . Jackson acknowledges that he has never had one sit to him whose living expression it has been so difficult to catch as in my own case; nor has he ever had one sit to him so many times, or for whom he has exerted himself so laboriously to achieve success. Besides, there is an inherent difficulty with which he has had to contend, and which it is not possible for even genius to surmount, in making a bust of me. My spectacles are a part of my face, few ever see me for a moment without them,- and they greatly modify the appearance of my eyes, and my general expression of countenance. In fact, when I lay them aside, I am almost another man" (MS. May 1, 1858, to Oliver Johnson).

2 A marble copy of the bust was cut in Italy, and was received in Boston in March, 1879, shortly before Mr. Garrison left home for the last time.

1877-79.

He had spent the Christmas holidays of 1877 with his CHAP. XI. children in New York, and was with them again in May, for a fortnight. The greater part of July, August, and September, 1878, he passed with his daughter and her family at Tarrytown, on the Hudson, a region appealing strongly to his love of the beautiful and romantic in nature. There he rested quietly for weeks, enjoying the lovely outlook upon the Hudson and Tappan Zee, playing at ninepins with his grandchildren, driving to Sleepy Hollow and other places in the vicinity, and making excursions up the river to the Military Academy at West Point, and to Vassar College at Poughkeepsie, by way of contrast. He also spent a few days at Osterville, on Cape Cod, and in September went to Philadelphia to see Lucretia Mott and other friends.

In June he had been summoned to Florence, Mass., to speak at the funeral of Charles C. Burleigh,1 and early in "It is admirably executed," he wrote to his daughter, "and the marble is of the purest white. I do not think a more accurate counterfeit presentment' of your father's features could possibly be made; and I am particularly pleased that it has been achieved by a woman" (MS. Mar. 28, 1879, W. L. G. to F. G. V.). The bust, which is now (1889) at Rockledge, stands on a pedestal which brings it exactly to Mr. Garrison's height (5 feet 8 in.). An engraving of it forms the frontispiece of this work. 1 Mr. Burleigh came to a premature death through injuries received from a passing railroad train. "For more than forty years," wrote Mr. Garrison of him, "he was almost constantly in the lecturing field, during which period he travelled many thousands of miles, addressed hundreds of thousands of hearers, cheerfully encountering every hardship, serenely confronting mobocratic violence, shrinking from no peril, heedless of unescapable ridicule (stimulated and intensified by the non-conformity of the outward man in the matter of dress, the wearing of the hair and beard); yet evincing such a mastery of his subject, such powers of argument and persuasion, such force of intellect and breadth of mind, such copiousness of speech and fertility of illustration on every question discussed, as made it an easy task for him to confound and vanquish all opponents. Indeed, he never found a foeman worthy of his steel.' He never lost his balance. Whoever else, in the heat and conflict of reform, might be led into extravagance of speech, or bitterness of invective, or error of reasoning, his self-control was absolute, his presentation of the case singularly dispassionate, his accusations and impeachments within the truth, his supreme effort not to bring down the house' but to enlighten and convert it. At the bar, before a jury, he would hardly have found his peer; on the judicial bench he would have been chief" (MS. written for publication, but not used).

VOL. IV.-19

Aug. 2, 8,

1878. Aug. 13.

Aug. 15-20.

June 16.

Oct. 7, 1878.

1878.

Ante, 1:179;

October he was apprised by cable that George Thompson had passed away. He at once prepared a long biographi cal sketch of his old coadjutor for the New York and Boston papers,1 rehearsing his labors and achievements, and paying a fervent tribute to his memory.

The 13th of October was the sixtieth anniversary of Mr. Garrison's apprenticeship to the printing business, and by way of celebrating the event he visited NewburySaturday. port on the morning of the 12th, and once more essayed the task of setting type in the office of the Herald. It proved to be the last time he ever visited his birthplace or handled the composing-stick. For "copy" he took three of his own sonnets,- the "Freedom of the Mind," 2:432, 433. that on "Liberty," and the one written on his thirty-fifth Newbury birthday,- and he set them, the editor of the Herald tesport Herald, tified, "in a time which many a younger printer might emulate." The type "was a little formidable to look at, if one might describe it so," said Mr. Garrison; "it was nonpareil type, and that for seventy-three years was rather a task, but nevertheless I was able to achieve it; I did not squabble a line, and, on taking a proof of what I had set, there was not a single error."

Oct. 14.

1878.

Speech at Franklin Club Din

En

ner, Oct. 14.

The sonnets were printed in the Herald of the 14th, and on the evening of the same day a dinner in honor of his anniversary was tendered to Mr. Garrison by the New England Franklin Club, an association of printers, at Young's Hotel in Boston. Mr. Henry O. Houghton, the founder of the Riverside Press, presided, and the leading printers of Boston, as well as some from New York, were present. Mr. Garrison's address was wholly extemporaneous and colloquial, but spoken with unusual ease and charm of manner. Naturally reminiscent and biographical, in the main, as he recounted his early expe

1 N. Y. Times, Boston Journal and Transcript, Oct. 14, 1878. Mr. Garrison also wrote a briefer sketch to accompany a portrait of Mr. Thompson in Harper's Weekly (Dec. 21, 1878), and sent a heliotype copy of the daguerreotype taken in 1851-the same from which the engraving in Vol. I. of this work was made- -to nearly a hundred of his friends in England and America.