er. He had already made himself known to us as a resolute
and self-sacrificing abolitionist. Lewis Tappan and myself took our
places at his side as secretaries, on the elevation at the west end of
the hall.

Looking over the assembly, I noticed that it was mainly composed of
comparatively young men, some in middle age, and a few beyond that
period. They were nearly all plainly dressed, with a view to comfort
rather than elegance. Many of the faces turned towards me wore a look of
expectancy and suppressed enthusiasm; all had the earnestness which might
be expected of men engaged in an enterprise beset with difficulty and
perhaps with peril. The fine, intellectual head of Garrison, prematurely
bald, was conspicuous; the sunny-faced young man at his side, in whom all
the beatitudes seemed to find expression, was Samuel J. May, mingling in
his veins the best blood of the Sewalls and Quincys,--a man so
exceptionally pure and large-hearted, so genial, tender, and loving, that
he could be faithful to truth and duty without making an enemy.

"The de'il wad look into his face,
And swear he couldna wrang him."

That tall, gaunt, swarthy man, erect, eagle-faced, upon whose somewhat
martial figure the Quaker coat seemed a little out of place, was Lindley
Coates, known in all eastern Pennsylvania as a stern enemy of slavery;
that slight, eager man, intensely alive in every feature and gesture, was
Thomas Shipley, who for thirty years had been the protector of the free
colored people of Philadelphia, and whose name was whispered reverently
in the slave cabins of Maryland as the friend of the black man, one of a
class peculiar to old Quakerism, who in doing what they felt to be duty,
and walking as the Light within guided them, knew no fear and shrank from
no sacrifice. Braver men the world has not known. Beside him, differing
in creed, but united with him in works of love and charity, sat Thomas
Whitson, of the Hicksite school of Friends, fresh from his farm in
Lancaster County, dressed in plainest homespun, his tall form surmounted
by a shock of unkempt hair, the odd obliquity of his vision contrasting
strongly with he clearness and directness of his spiritual insight.
Elizur Wright, the young professor of a Western college, who had lost his
place by his bold advocacy of freedom, with a look of sharp concentration
in keeping with an intellect keen as a Damascus blade, closely watched
the procee