e Puritan spirit of order and thrift, and the business-like view of
government which grew out of the practice of town government. A less
sentimental community, I do not think, exists anywhere, or one in which
the expression of strong feeling on any subject but religion is less
cultivated or viewed with less favour. In the matter of managing their
own political affairs in peace or war, I do not expect the Irish to
equal the Connecticut people for a hundred years to come, no matter how
much practice they may have in the interval, and I think that fifty
years ago it was only picked bodies of Englishmen who could do so. Yet,
in 1833, in the town of Canterbury, one of the most orderly and
intelligent in the State, an estimable and much-esteemed lady, Miss
Prudence Crandall, was carrying on a girls' school, when something
happened to touch her conscience about the condition of the free negroes
of the North. She resolved, in a moment of enthusiasm, to undertake the
education of negro girls only. What follows forms one of the most famous
episodes in the anti-slavery struggle in America, and is possibly
familiar to many of the older readers of this article. I shall extract
the account of it as given briefly in the lately published life of
William Lloyd Garrison, by his sons. Some of the details are much worse
than is here described.

"The story of this remarkable case cannot be pursued here except in
brief.... It will be enough to say that the struggle between the modest
and heroic young Quaker woman and the town lasted for nearly two years;
that the school was opened in April; that attempts were immediately made
under the law to frighten the pupils away and to fine Miss Crandall for
harbouring them; that in May an Act prohibiting private schools for
non-resident coloured persons, and providing for the expulsion of the
latter, was procured from the legislature, amid the greatest rejoicing
in Canterbury (even to the ringing of church bells); that, under this
Act, Miss Crandall was in June arrested and temporarily imprisoned in
the county jail, twice tried (August and October) and convicted; that
her case was carried up to the Supreme Court of Errors, and her
persecutors defeated on a technicality (July, 1834), and that pending
this litigation the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to
isolate the school from the countenance and even the physical support of
the townspeople. The shops and the meeting-house were closed ag