he
needed to be in that primitive settlement. Children and cares came apace
to the young wife, and we may be sure confined her more and more closely
to her house. But in the midst of a fast-increasing family and of
multiplying cares a day's outing did occasionally come to the busy
housewife, when she would go down the river to spend it at her father's
farm. Once, ten years after her marriage, she had a narrow escape on one
of those rare days. She had started in a boat with her youngest child,
Abijah, and a lad who worked in her household. It was spring and the St.
John was not yet clear of ice. Higher up the river the ice broke that
morning and came floating down with the current. The boat in which Mary
Garrison and her baby rode was overtaken by the fragments and wrecked.
The mother with her child sought refuge on a piece of ice and was driven
shoreward. Wrapping Abijah in all the clothes she could spare she threw
him ashore. She and the lad followed by the aid of an overhanging willow
bough. The baby was unharmed, for she had thrown him into a snow-bank.
But the perils of the river gave place to the perils of the woods. In
them Mary Garrison wandered with her infant, who was no less a personage
than the father of William Lloyd Garrison, until at length she found the
hut of a friendly Indian, who took her in and "entertained her with his
best words and deeds, and the next morning conducted her safely to her
father's."

The Palmers were a hardy, liberty-loving race of farmers, and Joseph
Garrison was a man of unusual force and independence of character. The
life which these early settlers lived was a life lived partly on the
land and partly on the river. They were equally at home with scythe or
oar. Amid such terraqueous conditions it was natural enough that the
children should develop a passion for the sea. Like ducks many of them
took to the water and became sailors. Abijah was a sailor. The
amphibious habits of boyhood gave to his manhood a restless, roving
character. Like the element which he loved he was in constant motion. He
was a man of gifts both of mind and body. There was besides a strain of
romance and adventure in his blood. By nature and his seafaring life he
probably craved strong excitement. This craving was in part appeased no
doubt by travel and drink. He took to the sea and he took to the cup.
But he was more than a creature of appetites, he was a man of sentiment.
Being a man of sentiment what should