Earlier than had been advertised Mechanics Hall was thronged to its utmost capacity, in the vast audience there being as many women as men. Three sides of the walls bore placards on which were the words:

At half-past seven o'clock Hon. W.W. Rice called the meeting to order, saying: "There is no true man that does not feel his bosom swell with indignation and grief, and pray that God will watch over this land with his especial care. For Virginia has, to-day, executed a man, who, by the judgment of this community, is guilty of no moral crime; but for his fidelity to the principles which his own soul told him were truths and duty. And we are met to hear the words of our best and most eloquent men, and to tender our aid and sympathy to the family—that family in whose veins flows the blood of the martyr, Brown." In closing, Mr. Rice, who had been heard with repeated applause, read the following list of officers:

Deacon Washburn, in taking the chair, called on the Rev. Mr. Richardson to open the further exercises with prayer, after which he read the following letter inclosing twenty dollars:

The speeches that followed were of a particularly eloquent nature. Why should this be otherwise? Never had men a grander theme nor more sympathetic listeners. The Rev. Mr. Shippen, among other glowing passages, said: "John Brown felt as Cromwell felt that he was commissioned by God to fight against the wrong. Believing in that eternal judgment based upon the law more lasting than the temporary statutes of to-day, he acted in accordance with the spirit of the Gospel, as he in his conscience understood it." Hon. D.F. Parker was glad to honor John Brown because he dared, upon slave soil, to strike the blow he did. "Whenever wrong exists, it is our duty to wage war against it, with peaceful remedies if possible, if not, then with such as our grandsires used in settling accounts with their oppressors."

The Rev. Mr. Richardson was particularly apt—I may say, grandly prophetic. Thus: "Never at the beginning of great periods in history was insurrection so successful as that. It has made it apparent that slavery can and must be abolished; it has set every press and every tongue in the land to agitating the subject of slavery, and has made the pillars of that institution to rock and reel. It has diminished the value of slave stock. Two hundred million dollars, says a Southern paper, John Brown destroyed that Sunday night, and has led how many families to look for a speedy and certain method of getting rid of the perilous property. That man whom we wrong in calling crazy, was groping for the pillars of the slave institution, and he has been successful." Then came Rev. T.W. Higginson who had known much of Brown's plans, and to whom the prisoner had written only a short time before his execution. "How little, one year ago to-day, we expected to hear such words from men who have been deemed conservative; words so heroic, so absolute in defence of principle; and I have wished the pen to record the thoughts which lie behind the faces we all meet; the anxious, the determined, the desperate faces, the varied faces that meet us ... John Brown is now beyond our reach; but the oppressed for whom he died still live. Methinks I hear his voice speaking to you in the words of that Scripture which he loved, 'Inasmuch as ye did it to these little ones ye did it unto me.'"

The collection that was taken up for the family amounted to $145.88. Afterward Homer B. Sprague, Principal of the High School, spoke, as did Mrs. Abby K. Foster, both in an eloquent and forcible manner. At half-past ten o'clock the meeting adjourned, the large audience remaining to the end.

Milford, Millbury and Fitchburg, in this County, in a similar manner took notice of the sad event. In the Legislature, then in session, there was a movement made in both houses to secure an adjournment. Though defeated, the motion drew out pretty generally the sentiments of the members. Many of these voting against adjournment, admired the martyr; but objected to leaving the business of the day, saying that Brown himself would counsel continued attention to proper legislative duties.

From the vantage ground of twenty-five years after, it is interesting to read what leading exponents of public opinion said then. From the South there came but one cry. It was to be expected. Nothing else could have been tolerated. From the North there was a diversity of language.

The New York Tribune of December 3d said, and I can believe that Greeley himself wrote the words: "John Brown, dead, will live in millions of hearts, will be discussed around the homely hearth of Toil, and dreamed of on the couch of Poverty.... Yes, John Brown, dead, is verily a power like Samson in the falling temple of Dagon, like Ziska, dead, with his skin stretched over a drum head still routing the foe he bravely fought while living." The New York Herald of the same date, voicing the sentiment of those who actively or passively upheld slavery, alludes to the Hero as "Old John Brown, the culprit, hanged for murder," etc., and states that the South was correct. The Boston Courier wishes Governor Banks to ask the Legislature to make an appropriation of $40,000 to assist Virginia in paying the bills incident to the Trial. If I am not mistaken, it was this same Courier's editor, one Homer by name, who, some years before, had placarded the city to excite a riot against Thompson, the English Emancipationist, and who had been largely instrumental in fostering trouble for Garrison and Phillips.

If we only knew that we were prophesying at the time! Little did the Tribune writer think that his allusion to Ziska would prove almost literally true. In two years from the death of John Brown the Twelfth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, the Fletcher Webster Regiment, marched down the streets of Boston to