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money considerations. It was felt that to him who had given so much to
the world, the world should in his need make some substantial
acknowledgement in return.

Some of his countrymen, accordingly, conceived the plan of a national
testimonial to the philanthropist, which should ensure to him during the
rest of his life a competence.

A committee having this end in view was organized March 28, 1866, at the
house of Dr. Henry I. Bowditch. John A. Andrew, who was its chairman,
wrote the address to the public, to which were appended the chief names
in the politics and literature of the land. Nearly two years afterward,
on March 10, 1868, the committee were able to place in Mr. Garrison's
hands the handsome sum of thirty-one thousand dollars with a promise of
possibly one or two thousand more a little later. To the energy and
devotedness of one man, the Rev. Samuel May, Jr., more than to any
other, and perhaps than all others put together, this noble achievement
was due. The pioneer was deeply moved at the high and generous character
of the recognition accorded his labors. "Little, indeed, did I know or
anticipate how prolonged or how virulent would be the struggle," said he
in his reply to the committee, "when I lifted up the standard of
immediate emancipation, and essayed to rouse the nation to a sense of
its guilt and danger. But having put my hands to the plow, how could I
look back? For, in a cause so righteous, I could not doubt that, having
turned the furrows, if I sowed in tears I should one day reap in joy.
But, whether permitted to live to witness the abolition of slavery or
not, I felt assured that, as I demanded nothing that was not clearly in
accordance with justice and humanity, sometime or other, if remembered
at all, I should stand vindicated in the eyes of my countrymen." The
names of John Bright, John Stuart Mill, William E. Foster, and Samuel
Morley, among the contributors to the fund, lent to the testimonial an
international character.

In May, 1867, Garrison went abroad the fourth time, and traveled in
Great Britain and on the Continent. Everywhere that he went he was
received as an illustrious visitor and as a benefactor of mankind. At a
breakfast in London which "was intended to commemorate one of the
greatest of the great triumphs of freedom, and to do honor to a most
eminent instrument in the achievement of that freedom," and at which
were gathered the genius, the wealth, and aristocracy of Engl